Who Does He Think He Is? GOP’S Dan Winslow Is Shaking Things Up

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Who does he think he is? GOP’s Dan Winslow is shaking things up

No easy cure for patronage Lawrence on the mat The Tea Party ﬂ unks history Public sector union tempest

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volume 16, number 2 | spring 2011

34 64 74

ARTICLES DEPARTMENTS 34 | ON THE COVER WHO DOES HE THINK HE IS? Dan Winslow 7 | CORRESPONDENCE

is a freshman state rep—but a wily veteran of Massachusetts 9 | EDITOR’S NOTE politics. He’s taking Beacon Hill by storm and challenging the way business gets done there. BY PAUL McMORROW 11 | INQUIRIES 18 | STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT 44 | REIGNING SUPREME Clerk-magistrates, with lifetime Public sector pay tenure and no mandatory retirement age, rule the roost in BY BEN FORMAN AND KATIE MCGINN Massachusetts courthouses. BY JACK SULLIVAN 21 | STATE OF THE STATES 54 | NO EASY PATRONAGE CURE Some say Civil Service is the R&D spending way to rid government of patronage hiring. But is the cure BY JACK SULLIVAN worse than the disease? BY BRUCE MOHL 23 | HEAD COUNT 64 | LAWRENCE ON THE MAT The scrappy Merrimack Valley Wireless competition city has never had it easy. These days things are even BY JACK SULLIVAN tougher than usual. BY GABRIELLE GURLEY 25 | WASHINGTON NOTEBOOK Fish fight BY SHAWN ZELLER DISCUSSION 29 | WHAT WORKS 74 | CONVERSATION Jill Lepore says the Tea Party movement has more in com- Piloting global payments mon with religious fundamentalism than with serious consideration of BY PIPPIN ROSS American history. BY MICHAEL JONAS 96 | REAL TALK 85 | ARGUMENT & COUNTERPOINT The state can save millions by putting Labor’s love lost lawyers for the poor on the state payroll, instead of contracting for their BY MICHAEL JONAS services BY JAY GONZALEZ The touted savings are overstated, and the plan conflicts with constitutional separation of powers principles. BY ARNOLD R. ROSENFELD

91 | BOOK REVIEW Ed Glaeser’s The Triumph of the City makes a strong policy case for a vibrant urban future; the politics of getting there will be much harder. BY JOHN SCHNEIDER

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correspondence

UTILITIES ARE THE RATS able energy well below the cost of Regarding your article “The Meter is fossil fuel-fired energy. And what if Running” (Winter ’11), the only rats we no longer needed to throw away hiding under the rocks are the electric all the money that goes to energy- utility companies who refuse to buy related military encounters—or meaningful amounts of clean, renew- shall we call it “protection of our oil able energy and the regulatory agen- addiction”—to the tune of trillions cies who won’t require them to do so. of dollars. Business as usual is simply not Last, but far from least, is local job acceptable with our air quality dete- creation. These clean energy projects riorating and our climate changing at are homegrown, keep the money in an alarming pace. The utilities were the local economy, benefit communi- given monopoly status to provide core ties with new revenues, and become a services to the public, not to stand in source of great community pride. We with oil, foreign or otherwise. It is the way of the public good. In my send over $360 billion a year to the produced with hydropower, nu clear opinion, the first priority of the policy- Middle East to support our addiction power, natural gas, and coal. makers, regulators, and the regulated to fossil fuels. If Massachusetts picks This deal is simply a way for Kings- utilities should be to stop polluting up a fiftieth of that cost, that’s over ton to get its bills paid by the residents our world by burning fossil fuels, $7 billion out of our pockets every of all the other towns. Is that fair? admit the real cost of these polluting year. How many jobs do you think $7 Rhode Island has the same con- sources of energy, and give clean billion would create? A lot. troversy with “net metering.” See a renewable energy at least the same I for one am proud of what we are video report on the controversy at treatment in terms of subsidization doing in Kingston and other towns hummelreport.com. The Rhode and incentives. Absent the hidden in Massachusetts where enlightened Island Division of Public Utilities subsidies we as taxpayers and ratepay- local and state officials have teamed believes that federal law trumps state ers bear to support the coal, oil, gas, up to promote a clean energy future. laws on energy, so this deal is proba- and nuclear industries, making ener- We should be pushing for more clean bly illegal. gy from renewable sources like wind energy development instead of pro- Benjamin C. Riggs and solar is far less expensive. moting the bloated, polluting, fossil Newport, Rhode Island A report funded by Congress and fuel-based economy we know has released in October 2009 concluded been degrading our quality of life that $120 billion in taxpayer subsi- and sucking money out of our pock- WINN’S NICE RETURN dies to the fossil fuel industries is not ets for years. The most interesting thing to me reflected in the price of electricity and Mary O’Donnell about Paul McMorrow’s impressive gasoline. This figure does not include Kingston article (“Money Talks—and Delivers,” the price of damage associated with Winter ’11) is the ratio between the climate change, harm to the ecosys- spending by WinnCompanies and the tem, the health effects from toxic air NET METERING UNFAIR government benefits they receive. After pollutants such as mercury, and the Somebody needs to tell Mary O’Don - spending $2 million on campaign added military costs related to our nell that electricity is not produced contributions and lobbying, the firm protection of fossil fuel producing countries. For every $1 spent on governmental We welcome letters to the editor. Send your comments to editor@mass- support for emerging clean renew- inc.org, or to Editor, CommonWealth magazine, 18 Tremont Street, Suite able energy technologies, the fossil 1120, Boston, MA 02108. Please include a city or town, as well as a day- fuel guys get $5 of pork. Transferring those subsidies from dirty to clean time phone number. Letters may be edited for clarity and length. energy would put the price of renew-

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correspondence

receives $62 million. Thirty bucks for some people may not be as agile and PERSPECTIVE DESPICABLE investing one. Who wouldn’t like that quick as others, so motorists may have The Perspective piece “A call to rea- deal? Except, of course, for the taxpay- to wait a few seconds longer. son” (Winter ’11) is despicable. So ers, who provide the $62 million. After a careful reading of the arti- we stop lobbying for harsher penal- Sue Bass cle, I still do not understand exactly ties for sex offenders because they’re Belmont what, in the opinion of the police, not your textbook ski mask type? Mrs. Cadden did wrong. My faith in That’s ridiculous. As a victim of sexual the law has been shaken, and I will abuse myself, I find this child rapist- WHAT DID HELEN CADDEN proceed with less confidence and sympathizing article absurd. Offend - DO WRONG? extreme caution. ers should be put on the spot and “A Son Seeks Answers” (Winter ’11) Alan Emmet they should be made to feel guilty raises important questions. How is it Westford and ashamed by their disgraceful possible that the State Police blame actions. Helen Cadden for the accident that Scott Moore ended her life? HIGH MARK FOR PRINCIPAL Pittsfield The sign on the street said “State Regarding “Grade Expectations” Law: Yield for Pedestrians in Cross - (Winter ’11), Dr. Szachowicz’s grade walk.” Evelyn Pursley failed to obey as principal at Brockton High School GIFT FROM GOD this law. What difference does it make on this most challenging assignment: MAP class 54 (“MAP Shows the Way,” at what speed Mrs. Cadden was walk- A+! What Works, Winter ’11) changed my ing? I am often a pedestrian at such Dr. Charles L. Mitsakos entire life. St. Francis House is a true crossings. I welcome them. I value Chelmsford, gift from God. them. And I trust them. Like most Professor Emeritus of Education, Steven Gilboard people, I cross as rapidly as I can. But Rivier College Boston

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editor’s note

Public or private?

gov. deval patrick clearly doesn’t think much of the judiciary’s management skills. He’s filed legislation calling for a professional manager, instead of a judge, to oversee the trial court. He wants to move the patronage-plagued “The long-run possibility of serious interference by Probation Department out of the judicial branch and the executive branch in the conduct of the public defense into the executive branch. And he wants to abolish the over which it has oversight is exactly why the ‘separation judiciary’s Committee for Public Counsel Services, which of powers’ was adopted,” Rosenfeld writes. hires private attorneys to represent most indigent defen- Naively, I had always assumed that private attorneys dants, and replace it with a new executive agency staffed stepped forward to represent indigent defendants largely by 1,500 state employees he would oversee. out of a spirit of public service. In reality, there’s a lot of The public counsel proposal is by far the most ambi- money at stake. Many private attorneys make their living tious of these. Patrick estimates he can save the state $60 handling indigent defense cases and a large percentage of million a year by using state lawyers instead of private them make more money than attorneys working for the attorneys to represent indigent defendants. That’s nearly state doing the same job. a third of what it costs the state now to provide legal rep- There is an organization called the Massachusetts resentation for poor people. Asso ciation of Court Appointed Attorneys and it lobbies In this issue of CommonWealth, two people on the on Beacon Hill on behalf of its members. On the organi- frontlines of this high-stakes debate argue their points of zation’s website, there is a sample letter that supporters are view. Jay Gonzalez, the governor’s secretary of adminis- being urged to send to key House and Senate lawmakers. tration and finance, makes the case for transforming the Under the governor’s proposal, the letter says, the newly so-called public counsel service into a public agency within hired state attorneys will be low paid and overburdened the executive branch of government. Arnold Rosenfeld, yet will still end up costing more than using private attor- an attorney at K&L Gates and a member of the board of neys because of their pensions and health care. Worse yet, the Committee for Public Counsel Services, argues for the letter says, the attorneys could unionize. (The letter keep ing the operation within the judiciary and continu- doesn’t elaborate, but the union reference seems to be an ing the practice of using private attorneys. attempt to tap into the angst created by the public sector The two sides are far apart. Gonzalez essentially says union fight in Wisconsin.) state workers can do just as good a job as private attorneys The bottom line, according to the association, is that but at far lower cost. “The purpose of the program is not the governor’s proposal won’t benefit taxpayers and it to provide private bar advocates with work,” he writes. “It won’t benefit indigent defendants. The association’s letter is to provide indigent criminal defendants with quality dismisses the governor’s proposal by saying indigent defen- legal representation as cost-effectively as possible.” dants “deserve a genuine defense, not one in name only.” Rosenfeld says Gonzalez’s savings estimates are illusory, Both sides in this debate raise legitimate issues. in part because he relies on faulty assumptions. Rosen feld Rosenfeld’s concerns about the separation of powers need also questions whether it makes sense—or is even consti- to be addressed, while Gonzalez’s cost savings, if they can tutional—to give the executive branch of government be achieved without sacrificing the quality of representa- the twin responsibilities of both locking up criminals and tion, are impossible to ignore. The situation cries out for defending them. a quick, independent review of the costs associated with hiring state attorneys to represent indigent defendants. Perhaps this is an area where the new state auditor, Suzanne Bump, could jump in and play referee.

bruce mohl

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10 CommonWealth SPRING 2011 MP26256Recycle11-17_ 22-23 stats 3/22/11 6:10 PM Page 11 inquiries Endless loop Lottery plots against ‘slots’ Nearly a year ago Attorney General > colman m. herman Martha Coakley proposed new regulations to protect auto insurance consumers, but she’s never pulled the trigger and imple- like those running any gambling enterprise, officials at the Massachusetts mented them. State Lottery don’t like anyone muscling in on their turf. And when they think Coakley solicited feedback on her pro- someone is, they can lower the boom on the interlopers with the best of them. posal last summer and since then has Court records indicate that in 2009 the Lottery became so alarmed about kept extending the deadline for com- devices resembling slot machines popping up at convenience stores and ments for several months at a time. The other locations that it went on a major offensive. The Lottery informed its current deadline is April 15. sales agents in no uncertain terms that it would terminate their licenses to Automobile insurers say they don’t sell Lottery products if they also placed the slot-like devices in their stores. know what’s going on with the regula- “The Lottery does not want to be in partnership with agents that engage tions or with Coakley. When the regula- in such business,” the state agency said in a late 2009 letter. “Therefore, this tions were first unveiled, the insurers letter will serve as notice that pursuant to [state law governing Lottery licens- made clear they didn’t like them. They ing] the Lottery will terminate agents discovered to be using non-Lottery hope the delays continue indefinitely. gaming or gaming-like devices.” Coakley’s regulations focus on the The devices targeted by the Lottery occupy a murky legal area. They sell rating factors that insurers use to decide a prepaid phone card for a dollar, but with the phone card comes the chance how much to charge drivers for coverage. to play what is essentially a video slot machine, complete with spinning When the state used to set auto insur- fruit and cash payoffs to winners. Other vendors operate Internet sweep- ance rates, insurers could only consider stakes cafes, where patrons buy computer time along with the chance to factors such as a customer’s driving his- play video games for cash prizes. tory, their vehicle type, and the vehicle’s Distributors of the devices claim their machines are perfectly legal, offer- garaging location. ing sweepstakes promotions that are no different from those run by com- After the Patrick administration panies like Coca-Cola, Kellogg, Nestlé, and Sunkist. embraced managed competition among King’s Prepaid Phone Cards, one of the major distributors of the phone auto insurers, more experimentation card machines, is suing the Lottery, claiming the was allowed. Coakley fears some com- competition agency’s actions have wreaked havoc on its busi- panies are using a customer’s payment ness, since most of its machines are placed with history or purchase of homeowners for the Lottery licensees. The Billerica–based company insurance as proxies for banned factors lottery. contends that in early 2009 the Lottery “began a like income, home ownership, and campaign of threats, intimidation, and coercion credit ratings. designed to eliminate [King’s] from the marketplace.” Insurers say Coakley’s regulations King’s says it had about 150 of the machines operating in about 100 loca- would kill off many of the pricing dis- tions in more than 70 cities and towns throughout Massachusetts, generating counts they have introduced and drive about $100,000 a month per machine in gross revenue. But in the wake of the up premium costs. Coakley isn’t saying Lottery’s crackdown, King’s says its business shriveled, plummeting to 12 mach- much of anything about her regulations, ines in five locations. The suit is still pending. All parties declined comment. which seem to be caught in an endless The Lottery isn’t the only one trying to block the spread of these machines. feedback loop. “We continue to receive Cities and towns are also trying to shut them down or force them to seek feedback and to evaluate the proposed licenses for their operations. Chelsea shut down one King’s operation last auto insurance regulations,” says Coak - August for failing to have an entertainment license. In Boston, an eight- ley’s spokeswoman. machine operation at Evelyn’s Place, an East Boston storefront completely > bruce mohl dedicated to the devices, shut down abruptly in February after Boston Mayor

SPRING 2011 CommonWealth 11 inquiries

Thomas Menino began raising concerns. found machines in Fall River were legal because investi- Menino, whose spokesman was contacted by Common - gators failed to show that players could not play for free. Wealth for a comment about the Evelyn’s operation, On a visit to Evelyn’s one morning in early February responded by sending a letter to Attorney General Martha before it shut down, the place was bustling with activity. Coakley asking her to investigate. “I am concerned that It was obvious players were focused on winning cash such unregulated gambling activity will victimize seniors prizes and not the phone cards. There was also no free- and other vulnerable residents,” Menino wrote. play option, according to the attendant. An official from Coakley’s office declined to say whether One of the players, a senior citizen, whispered that she the attorney general was involved in the shuttering of Evelyn’s. had lost $300 playing the machine that day. “Like Fox woods, Lottery officials said they were not involved. The former you can’t beat the machines,” she said. “It’s an addiction.” owner of Evelyn’s could not be reached for comment. Whether the devices are legal or not hinges on whether they are lotteries, which are illegal unless they are state-run. According to case law, a lottery requires three essential ele- Hollywood stars ments: a game of chance; payment of some consideration, such as money, to play the game of chance; and a prize. not paying taxes? Remove any one of these elements and there is no lottery. > bruce mohl Opera tors of the slot-like devices say there is no payment to play the game of chance because the player is actually paying for a phone card or time on the Internet. Operators some of hollywood’s hottest stars may be shortchang- also say it’s possible to play without even buying a card. ing Massachusetts on their taxes. The free-play option was the deciding factor in a 2007 A brief reference at the end of the state Revenue Appeals Court lawsuit brought by South Dartmouth– Department’s latest report on the film tax credit says the based Nutel Communications, a competitor of King’s, that agency received no income taxes on residual payments to

THERE’S A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BEING IN A COMMUNITY AND BEING PART OF IT.

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12 CommonWealth SPRING 2011 MP26256Recycle11-17_ 22-23 stats 3/22/11 6:10 PM Page 13

inquiries

actors and directors who shot movies in Massachusetts Joe Maiella, president of the Massachusetts Pro duc tion between 2006 and 2009. There was no further explana- Coalition, a trade group formed to boost the state’s bud- tion, but the implication was that actors and directors like ding film industry, often mentions taxes on residuals as a Ben Affleck, Steve Martin, Tom Cruise, and Martin Scorcese benefit of the state’s film tax credit. He says the fact that aren’t paying all the taxes owed on money they technically the state hasn’t received any of the tax revenue means the earned in Massachusetts. Revenue Depart ment will probably need to do some detec- Robert Bliss, a spokesman for the Revenue Depart ment, tive work to track it down. says the agency is looking into the issue. He declined to “To accurately assess this, it would seem the DOR would have to identify every principal actor and director who has worked on a feature film, commercial, TV pilot, or PBS program since 2005, determine who of those are out-of-state residents, and determine if taxes had been paid on residual income over elaborate. the last six years,” he says. Residual payments are one of the quirks of the movie The Revenue Department’s most recent report on the business. Actors and directors are typically paid salaries film tax credit generated some concern among supporters for their work on a movie, but many also get a cut of any of the credit—and provided fresh ammunition to those revenues or profits generated after the film’s release. These who oppose it. The report said the credit had spurred $319 residual payments often are triggered when a movie goes million in new spending on movies, TV shows, and com- into DVD release or is sold to television. mercials in 2009, but only a third of the money went to Proponents of the state’s film tax credit often call the Massa chu setts residents or businesses. The rest flowed salaries of big stars the gift that keeps on giving, since big- out of state. name actors pay taxes on their initial salary for a film and A delegation, led by Secretary of Housing and are supposed to keep paying taxes to the state as income Economic Development Greg Bialecki and former actor from residuals flows in. But so far tax revenue from resid- and now ad man John Dukakis traveled to Hollywood in uals has been the gift that never arrived. February seeking to reassure studios that the state’s film Revenue Department officials aren’t sure why they tax credit wasn’t going to fall victim to state budget cut- aren’t receiving tax payments on residuals. Part of the backs. No one was releasing details of the discussions problem is they aren’t privy to deals on income derived with Hollywood studios, but it’s a good bet the subject of after a movie wraps and is released. Indeed, DOR officials unpaid taxes by actors and directors never came up. have had some problems even collecting taxes on the initial salaries paid to actors and directors. “The first priority for DOR has been to make sure that nonresident actors are paying income withholding tax on Fall River gambler the salary paid for their work in Massachusetts at the time > paul mcmorrow of production,” Bliss says. Movie productions are fond of creating complex financial structures to reduce their tax exposure. Producers in upending a planned 300-acre biotech park, Fall River often pay stars through intermediary companies called Mayor William Flanagan picked a fight with the gover- loan-outs, an arrangement that makes it difficult to deter- nor, angered the state university, junked a decade’s worth mine how much has been paid and to whom. of planning, and endangered a $23 million development To end the confusion, DOR last year approved new project. He did it all for a roll of the dice with the Mashpee regulations requiring movie production companies to Wampanoag, who promised to bring a casino to the land remit withholding taxes from a star’s check before an that was supposed to become the biotech park. And he’d application is submitted for the state’s film tax credit. But do it all again tomorrow. those regulations did nothing to address the payment of “We didn’t lose anything,” says Flanagan, who ended taxes on income generated after the film wraps and all the his dance with the Mashpee and went back and cemented actors and directors have gone home to California. a deal with the biotech park’s anchor tenant, UMass Dart -

KEIZO MORI-UPI-LANDOV / JEAN BLONDIN-REUTERS-LANDOV / LANDOV / JAVIER ROJAS-PI-LANDOV SPRING 2011 CommonWealth 13 MP26256Recycle11-17_ 22-23 stats 3/22/11 6:10 PM Page 14

inquiries

mouth, earlier this year. “My responsibility is to go after threatening to demand repayment for the Route 24 road- every economic development opportunity. My constituency work. Inspector General Gregory Sullivan warned that would expect nothing less.” the sale to the Mash pee could run afoul of state bidding Flanagan shocked the state last May, when he called a rules, and would violate a deed restriction explicitly ban- press conference announcing a deal to sell 300 acres off ning casino development on the 300-acre parcel. Flanagan Route 24 to the Mashpee. The tribe promised to abandon didn’t blink, even after legislation legalizing casinos failed plans to build a resort casino in Middleboro, and instead on Beacon Hill. “This is not a bridge to nowhere or a folly,” erect a $500 million gambling palace on the Route 24 parcel. he insisted. “This is a $500 million project.” Fall River’s deal with the Mashpee immediately ruffled Pressure from a rival Wam panoag tribe and UMass feathers inside Gov. Deval Patrick’s administration—and ultimately forced Flanagan to backtrack. In November, not just because officials first learned of Flanagan’s deal weeks before the first round of the $21 million land deal with the tribe when they began receiving phone calls from was supposed to close, a group of 10 taxpayers sued to reporters. block the sale. That group was led by the chief of Fall A year before, the state had sold the 300 acres to Fall River’s Pocasset Wampan oag tribe. The Pocasset saw the River’s economic development arm for a scant $2.5 mil- Mashpee land deal as an incursion into their territory. The lion. The land transfer capped a decade of planning, which group also included several environmental and anti-gam- envisioned the creation of a new commercial park in the bling activists. “To me, the whole thing smelled,” says jobs-starved region. Patrick opened up the potential biotech Lesley Rich, the attorney for the Pocasset and the taxpay- cluster for development by committing $33 million in er group. “It was obvious the mayor had cut a deal and he federal stimulus funds to build a new exit linking Route just lunged forward and tried to ram it through.” 24 to the park. Patrick also promised state funds to the park’s Flanagan bristled at the lawsuit. He characterized it as anchor tenant, a new $23 million UMass Dart mouth bio- “a war on jobs.” But he reversed course after two judges manufacturing facility. blocked the land sale, and UMass Dartmouth said it would The administration tried to back Flanagan down by rather not build its biomanufacturing plant at all, rather

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14 CommonWealth SPRING 2011 MP26256Recycle11-17_ 22-23 stats 3/24/11 6:09 PM Page 15

inquiries

than settle for a site outside the 300-acre park. That was “When their product is ready to go and they need a site enough for Flanagan. He told the Mashpee the deal was for manufacturing, they’ll see these sites are available, and off, called up UMass and the Patrick administration, and they’ll compare the costs. The reasons why people leave got them to recommit to building at the park. the state don’t evidence themselves here.” “I always thought we were walking a very tight rope,” The UMass facility, which is being built with a $15 Flanagan says. “It would be too detrimental to lose the million state grant, should be ready for construction bids casino and lose the tech park, given the unemployment in by this fall. Flanagan calls it “a game-changer.” So does he the region. The goal was to entertain both. Once I saw sig- regret putting it on hold for a year while he chased a casi- nals that we were close to losing both, it was time to hud- no? “Not at all,” he says. “The casino is still a possibility. dle back up on the definite project.” Once the Legislature passes a gaming bill, we will be at the Rich says the mayor had little choice. “Politically, the table for that, too.” mayor realized it was a dead end, and if he didn’t do something, he’d be sitting empty-handed the next election,” he says. Schools set aside funds Paul Vigeant, vice chancellor for economic development at UMass Dartmouth, says that by building the $23 for special ed increases million bio plant in a pad-ready green field off Route 24, > andreae downs rather than downtown or on campus, the university hopes to spur private biotech and pharmaceutical manufacturing in the park. Those linkages weren’t available brookline public schools are scrambling to close a anywhere else, he argues. nearly $1.5 million budget gap for the fiscal year begin- “There’s efficiency to the real estate transaction,” Vigeant ning in July, yet the School Committee is nevertheless set- says. The new facility will let Cambridge researchers test- ting aside $400,000 in case the city’s cost for private spe- manufacture new drugs at dramatically discounted rates. cial education rises.

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SPRING 2011 CommonWealth 15 inquiries

Public school systems that cannot accommodate cer- needed to accommodate them. Communities say a private tain special needs students internally often pay to send special ed school that reconstructs its programs can raise them to privately run schools that provide specialized its rates by as much as 25 to 40 percent. Annual tuitions instruction. Many communities set aside funds for the are already steep, ranging from $27,000 to $102,000 per private school tuitions in case charges increase or a stu- child for a day program and $108,000 to $297,000 for a dent with special needs moves to town. Lexington, for residential program. example, just learned a child requiring placement at a res- “It feels like a surprise, not because we don’t get notice, idential school is moving to town. The annual tuition is but because of the significance of the cost increase,” says $297,000. Brookline last year saw its $5.9 million private Peter Rowe, Brookline’s deputy school superintendent for school special education budget rise $43,000 due to finance. Next year, he said, tuition for one student alone tuition increases at the private special education schools will increase $18,000 following a reconstruction. “We don’t it uses. have the ability to grow our revenue by that amount.” Children attending these schools typically need services The state Department of Education says 28 programs that the local public school can’t provide, such as therapy at 18 private schools have been granted reconstruction for extreme behavioral issues, maintenance of multiple increases in the last five years, affecting 182 public school medical needs, or training in independent living for blind districts that are home to 1,075 special needs students. or deaf students. Most of the time, tuition for these “out Another 22 programs at 17 private schools have applied of district” schools increases by a state-controlled rate for reconstruction increases for the 2011-12 school year. pegged to inflation, which has ranged from .75 percent Four have already been approved. this year to as high as 3 percent in previous years. James Major, executive director of the association rep- But private special ed schools can raise their rates much resenting private special ed schools, says the institutions higher if they go through a process called program recon- seeking reconstruction increases are responding to the struction, which involves documenting needed changes needs of the children they serve. He says enrollment is in programs or staffing and the hike in tuition payments dropping at his member schools except for students with

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inquiries

autism, but he adds that the students the schools do borhoods. Curry was twice mugged at knife-point as a enroll tend to have more complicated needs. The schools teenager, and says fights, shootings, and the murders of raise money privately, but not enough to keep tuitions family members were facts of his life. Now the senior from rising, he says. counsel and legislative affairs director at the Massa chu setts Major cited one residential program that has applied League of Community Health Centers, he pushed himself for a 5.7 percent increase in tuition to cover an addition- to excel, graduating from Boston Latin Academy, St. Paul’s al three to four nurses to manage psychotropic medica- Macalester College, and the New England School of Law. tions and to expand to a full-year program. Breathing new life into the Boston branch of the Major said the state restricts private special needs NAACP won’t be easy. Jamarhl Crawford, the editor of schools to one reconstruction process every six years. Blackstonian, a news and features website, compares the organization to a favorite restaurant whose customers trickled away over the years as the quality declined. “Now you have to convince them that the sweet potato pie is Boston NAACP moves good again,” he says. Opinions vary on what the organization should be to recapture relevance doing. Crawford says it should do what it does best, legal advocacy and bringing attention to specific issues perco- > gabrielle gurley lating in black neighborhoods, such as returning to an elected school committee. But Barbara Lewis, director of the naacp’s boston branch all but dropped out of sight the Trotter Institute at the University of Massachusetts in recent years, but new president Michael Curry is look- Boston, thinks the organization, which marks its centen- ing to erase doubts about the all-volunteer organization’s nial this year, needs to initiate long-overdue conversa- relevancy by stepping up its advocacy for civil rights in tions about Boston’s troubled racial history. education and the workplace. Curry wonders if even a broader discussion about race Since moving into the top slot earlier this year, the 42- can happen. “To be very honest with you, I don’t think year-old Curry has focused on recruiting a team of teach- people…want to have an honest conversation,” Curry says. ers, doctors, lawyers, and community activists to priori- “They want to say, ‘Hey, slavery happened a long time ago; tize the specific issues that the branch will home in on in segregation is over; we’re all good; we love each other now; the months ahead. But he’s concerned about school clos- we’ve got a black president, let’s move on.’” ings in Boston and their impact on students of color, and Curry says Deval Patrick’s rise to governor is the employment discrimination. exception, not the rule. “The reality is that we are dealing Curry would like to launch a polling project to begin to with the taint of racism in the attitudes of people and get a handle on how many people have experienced dis- institutions,” he says. crimination in the workplace. “I get more [employment] discrimination calls than I would have ever imag- New NAACP president Michael ined,” he says. “Most em ployment Curry aims to reinvigorate the Boston branch. discrimination cases never make it to [the Massachusetts Com mis sion Against Discrim ination], but they do come through our office.” He recognizes that apathy may be one of the local NAACP chapter’s biggest obstacles. “People have given up and given in to racial profiling and police brutality,” says Curry, who grew up in Roxbury and Dor ches ter. “We live in a generation where people say, ‘Hey, no one is going to do anything about it anyway.’” Curry understands the stresses of living in violence-plagued neigh-

PHOTOGRAPH BY RENEÉ DEKONA SPRING 2011 CommonWealth 17 MP26256Recycle18-20_Layout 1 3/22/11 6:12 PM Page 18

statistically significant

Public sector pay: reasonable or excessive? by ben forman and katie mcginn

gov. scott walker’s victory in curbing collective bargaining rights of Wisconsin public sector workers casts a spotlight on the issue of disparities between public and private sector compensation. The same issue—whether public sector workers are getting overly generous pay and benefits—is simmering here in Massa chusetts, particularly with the state facing huge budget challenges this year. At first glance, disparities between compensation (wages plus benefits) in the state’s public and private sectors seem large. The most recent data from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) show state and local government jobs in Massachusetts offer 22 percent and 15 percent more compensation than private sector jobs, respectively. But these disparities in gross earnings can be mis- leading. Jobs in the public sector typically require more education and training, which could explain the appearance of additional compensation when looking at the BEA’s raw figures. Still, BEA numbers do reveal some useful facts about compensation for the Commonwealth’s state and local workers. First, growth in compensation for public sector employees in Massachusetts outpaced the private sector in recent years, but overall, public sector workers aren’t doing much better relative to their private sector counterparts than they have in the past. Between 2000 and 2008, compensation per job in the private sector fell by 3 percent. But for state and local workers, compensation continued to rise (13 percent and 6 percent, respectively). While public sector workers did relatively well in the slow growth 2000s, private sector workers seem to do much better in a strong economy. In the 1990s, their earnings increased by 14 percent, while compensation for state and local workers grew at less than half that rate. All told, disparities between public UNIONIZED PUBLIC WORKERS and private sector pay in Massa chu setts aren’t significantly larger now than they have been over the last two decades. The gap actually peaked in 1994, when state workers earned 29 percent more than private sector workers. The state- private sector pay gap is slightly larger now than the average over the last two decades, while the gap between local government and private sector compensation is a bit smaller. The second interesting find in the BEA data is the relatively modest dis- parity between public and private sector pay in Massachusetts in contrast to Less than 10% other states. Only three states (Mis - 10 to 20% s ouri, Indiana, and Pennsylvania) have smaller gaps between state government 20 to 35% ALASKA compensation and private sector com- 35 to 50% HAWAII pensation. This relative parity isn’t driv- More than 50% en by the state’s high private sector pay.

Source: Heritage Foundation analysis of 2006-2009 US Census data.

18 CommonWealth SPRING 2011 MP26256Recycle18-20_Layout 1 3/22/11 6:12 PM Page 19

Other wealthy states, including Connecticut (32nd) and New Jersey (41st), have PUBLIC-PRIVATE PAY GAP much larger disparities between public and private sector compensation. State rankings based on ratio Unionization doesn’t seem to explain this variation, either. Nearly two-thirds between state government and of state and local workers in Massachusetts are represented by unions com- private sector compensation. pared with less than half in Pennsylvania. Despite this dramatic difference in Larger ratios mean larger gaps. collective bargaining power, ratios of state to private sector compensation for the two states are nearly identical. state ratio Some caution is needed in interpreting BEA figures, but they do give support 1. Missouri 1.18 to two conclusions. 2. Indiana 1.20 First, Massachusetts local governments appear to have done better than the 3. Pennsylvania 1.22 state at tightening their belts in recent years. These compensation figures in - 4. Massachusetts 1.22 clude fast-rising municipal health care costs. Even with those costs, adjusted for inflation, local governments held compensation growth flat over the last 5. New Hampshire 1.25 four years, while state compensation grew by nearly 2 percent. With lawmakers Natl. Average 1.46 cutting local aid once again, they must be sure state government is bearing an 46. Arkansas 1.66 equal burden. 47. Utah 1.67 Second, public sector pay doesn’t seem to be as bloated as some might 48. New Mexico 1.69 assume and cuts could have real consequences. Voters are still feeling the reces- 49. Montana 1.80 sion and don’t have much of an appetite for overpaid public sector workers. But the economy is growing and private sector pay is rising again. Before we give 50. Vermont 1.94 public employees encouragement to leave government, elected leaders might remind voters about the critical services public employees provide. Source: US Bureau of Economic Analysis

Ben Forman is research director at MassINC. Katie McGinn is a Northeastern University student and an intern at MassINC.

MASSACHUSETTS AVERAGE ANNUAL COMPENSATION PER JOB (ADJUSTED FOR INFLATION) State and local workers earn more than their private sector counterparts.

$70,000

$60,000

LOCAL

$50,000 STATE

PRIVATE

$40,000 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Source: US Bureau of Economic Analysis

SPRING 2011 CommonWealth 19 MP26256Recycle18-20_Layout 1 3/22/11 6:12 PM Page 20

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20 CommonWealth SPRING 2011 MP26256Recycle21-22_ 22-23 stats 3/24/11 6:13 PM Page 21

state of the states

The next great thing by jack sullivan

despite the economic woes in the country, investment Suffolk University. “It’s the technological advancement in research and development continues to expand in all that enables businesses to grow. If you continue to make public, private, and nonprofit sectors, according to federal the same product you made in 1955, you’re probably not statistics. going to be a market leader anymore, no matter how much Nowhere is that impact felt greater than in Massa chu - of a leader you were in 1955.” setts, where more money is spent on business research and California’s $77.4 billion in total R&D expenditure development than in any other state in the country except dwarfed all other states and accounted for 21.6 percent of California, according to National Science Foundation sur- all state spending on research and development. Massa - veys for FY2008, the most recent data available. chusetts was a distant second to California, but it was the Massachusetts also ranks second overall nationally in only other state to exceed $20 billion. total R&D expenditures as a percent of the state’s Gross Businesses spent $19.5 billion on R&D in Massa chu - Domestic Product. Only New Mexico, which has a GDP setts. Surprisingly, given the state’s powerhouse educa- one-fifth the size of Massachusetts’s and where research tional institutions, only $2.2 billion was spent by the state’s and development spending was less than a quarter of the colleges and universities, placing Massachu setts sixth in $24.6 billion spent in the Bay State, ranks higher. that category. With its bevy of world-class research and “We have a lot of high tech and electronics here, so teaching hospitals, Massachusetts ranked first in nonprofit those folks are already invested in research and develop- R&D with $1.3 billion spent. California was second with ment,” says Charles Atherton, a professor of finance at $1 billion. No other state topped $400 million.

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT AS PERCENT OF STATE GDP

MINNESOTA: 2.98%

MASSACHUSETTS: 6.97%

CALIFORNIA: 4.31% ALASKA

HAWAII Less than 1% 1.0 to 1.5% 1.51 to 3.0% NEW MEXICO: 7.53% 3.01 to 15.0% More than 5% FLORIDA: 0.96%

Source: National Science Foundation

SPRING 2011 CommonWealth 21 MP26256Recycle21-22_ 22-23 stats 3/24/11 6:13 PM Page 22

COMING OCTOBER 20, 2011

The excitement returns as WBUR’s Tom Ashbrook, host of NPR’s On Point, moderates a speakers’ program featuring 16 leading-edge thinkers. Be part of the brainstorm

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22 CommonWealth SPRING 2011 MP26256Recycle23-24_ 22-23 stats 3/22/11 6:15 PM Page 23

head count

Untethered competition by jack sullivan

wireless phones, it seems, are ubiquitous. Talking, tex- Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, or Sprint Nextel, which is count- ting, surfing. On the street, on the T, and in the car. You ed as two because the company has two separate wireless can’t swing a dead Samsung without hitting someone with systems. The competition will be reduced with AT&T’s a cell phone of some kind. acquisition of T-Mobile. The five carriers only have over- In Massachusetts, as you would expect, cell phone sat- lapping service in 50 percent of the land mass in Massa - uration is near 90 percent, with more than 5.8 million chusetts, and about 6 percent of the state has no cell service wireless phones on the air in the state, according to the at all. 2010 Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications The farther west of Interstate 495 you are, the fewer and Cable Competition Status Report. your choices. In the population-rich metro area inside More people are dropping their home landlines in favor Route 128, all five carriers are available to 97 percent of of all wireless, though not at the same rate as nationally. the population. Out in the Berkshires, only 55 percent of Bay State residents, it seems, have a hard time cutting the subscribers have the full range of choice. An estimated cord completely. Between 2005 and the end of 2008, the 15,000 people from 58 towns, mostly in the western part most recent data available, the number of households of the state, cannot subscribe to any cell service, while with wireless-only service nearly tripled from 4.1 percent another 20,000 have only one provider available. to 11.3 percent, according to state estimates. That is still “Not surprisingly,” the report says, “coverage correlates below the national average of 20.1 percent. with population density and flatter topography, as wire- According to the state report, more than 90 percent of less signals are blocked by obstacles such as terrain and the state’s subscribers have their choice of five carriers— foliage.”

WIRELESS VOICE SERVICE AVAILABILITY IN MASSACHUSETTS (Verizon, AT&T Wireless, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Nextel)

NUMBER OF PROVIDERS (PERCENT OF POPULATION WITH ACCESS) 5 (90%) 4 (6.7%) 3 (1.8%) 2 (0.9%) 1 (0.3%) 0 (0.2%)

Source: Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications, overlay of coverage maps

SPRING 2011 CommonWealth 23 MP26256Recycle23-24_ 22-23 stats 3/22/11 6:15 PM Page 24

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24 CommonWealth SPRING 2011 MP26256Recycle25-28_ 22-23 stats 3/22/11 6:17 PM Page 25

washington notebook

Fish fight The Massachusetts congressional delegation is usually in sync with environmentalists, but not on fishing limits by shawn zeller

massachusetts democrats are close allies of ronment. The debate is over how many fish you the environmental community, routinely receiving can catch without depleting the stock.” top scores on environmental scorecards and lead- The issue has simmered for years but came to ing the charge on major environmental legislation a boil over last year’s rules implementing a 2006 in Washington. law that requires an end to overfishing by 2011. But don’t tell that to Peter Shelley, senior coun- The rules, which are set by a regional fishery counsel at the Conservation Law Foundation in Boston, cil for New England that reports to the Com merce or Tom Lalley, oceans communications director of Department in Washington, set a total allowable the Environmental Defense Fund in Washington. yearly catch for each fish species, with quotas estab- They are fighting hard to maintain strict fed- lished within each species for individual fisher- eral limits governing what Massachusetts fishermen. It’s called a “catch share,” which fishermen men can catch on the grounds that the restrictions can use, lease, or sell—something like a cap-and- are the only way to restore depleted stocks of cod, trade system for fishing. flounder, and other species. Their sworn enemies Environmental groups say the catch share sys- in the fight are not just the fishermen of New tem holds the greatest hope of rebuilding depleted Bedford and Gloucester, but also US Reps. Barney stocks after numerous other approaches—time Frank and John Tierney, Democrats who repre- limits forcing fishermen to spend more time at sent those communities in the House, and Demo - port, temporary closures of prime fishing grounds, crat John Kerry and Republican Scott Brown, the and limits on the use of the most efficient fishing Bay State’s senators. Gov. Deval Patrick, another gear—have mostly failed. political ally of the fishermen, made a personal But Massachusetts’s main fishing ports, New appeal in January to his friend President Obama to Bedford and Gloucester, are suing the Commerce ask him to intervene on behalf of the fishermen. Department to overturn the rules. They fear that It’s a situation that leaves Shelley “perplexed small businesses won’t have enough capital to stick and disappointed.” Lalley takes it less personally. it out when the catch limits are most strict and will “It’s hard to make assumptions about where mem- be forced to sell their shares to bigger operators, bers of Congress will stand on fishing,” he says. “It only to see the catch shares rise in value when fish tends to be a constituent services issue.” stocks recover. But the Massachusetts representatives insist that “For too long, self-interest, environmental ex - it’s they who are in the right, defending an ancient tremism, and undue influence from special interests way of life against rules that they believe will drive have shaped [the fishery] council decisions,” says small fishermen out of business. The catch limits, New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang, whose city’s fish- they insist, are based on flawed science and should ing catch, principally scallops, is the most valuable be higher. in the nation. “I don’t see an environmental issue here,” says Frank and Tierney filed a friend of the court Frank. “We’re not talking about making the ocean brief supporting Lang’s lawsuit last year. Frank calls dirty. We’re not talking about fouling the air. We’re the catch shares system a consolidation measure. not talking about anything that degrades the envi- “I don’t see why environmentalists should be in

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washington notebook

favor of fewer small independent people,” he says. The debate has become so heated that last year Frank and Tierney called on the Obama administration’s top fishing regulator, Jane Lubchenco, the head of the Com - merce Department’s National Oceanic and Atmos pheric Administration, to resign. She is a former board member of the Environmental Defense Fund, one of the environmental groups most enthusiastic about the catch share system. Frank later backed off, but was front and center last fall when he and Gov. Patrick met in Boston with Lubchenco’s boss, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, to urge him to raise the limits. Locke, who has since been nominated as US ambassador to China, got an earful from local fishermen as well and pledged to consider carefully whether to raise the catch limits. The fishermen’s hopes were dashed in January when Locke wrote to Patrick and Frank to say his hands were A NationalNaNational NetworkNeNetwork of LocalLocal tied. Frank, not normally someone to call fellow Demo - HumanHuHuman ServicesSeSercvi ess ProvidersPPrroviders crats to account, blasted Locke for a lack of “courage.” He also suggested Locke’s actions may make him less sup- portive of Obama administration initiatives in Congress. In the sspiritpirit of ssocialocial entrepreneurship, At the root of the dispute is whether Commerce’s pre- The MMENTORENTOR Network dictions of collapsing fish stocks are, in fact, true. Brian provides state and ccountyounty agencies with Rothschild, a professor of marine science at the Univer - cost-effectcost-effective,e, priviv private-sectorate-sector solutions sity of Massachusetts Dartmouth, says that catch limits to challengchallengeses they face in the are at least 30 percent too low for most species and that Commerce could allow the state’s fishermen to pull an delivery of human servservices.ices. additional 100,000 tons of fish out of the water, valued at about $30 million, without negatively impacting conser- For more tthanhan 30 yeyears,ars, we havhavee vation goals. provided an array of servservicesices to adults The law “says you take economics into account as well and children witwithh intellectual and as the pace at which you replenish” the fish stocks, Frank developmentdevelopmentalal disabilities, brain and adds, setting a 10-year deadline for replenishing the stocks. spinal cord injuries and other “We’ve said: ‘If it’s going well, and we’re making progress, catastrophic injuries and illnesses, and why not 12 or 13 years?’” But environmentalists see the problem as far more pre- to youtyouthh witwithh emotemotional,ional, behavbehavioralioral carious. And they point to New England’s signature fish aandnd medically compcomplexlex challenges as as a prime example. A study by professors at the Univer - well as their families. sity of New Hampshire found that the cod population on Georges Bank, about 60 miles off of Cape Cod, would need to expand by nine times to reach a healthy level. The overfishing problem began, in environmentalists’ view, a century ago when steam-powered trawlers first took to the seas off New England. In the 1950s, regulations restricted the size of nets the trawlers could use, only to be circumvented by foreign ships that swarmed the waters off New England. 313 Congress Street, 5th Floor It wasn’t until the early 1970s that international rules Boston, MA 02210 took effect. Later that decade, Congress passed the 617-790-4800 Magnuson-Stevens Act, which declared US control over www..thementorn.thementornetwork.com waters out to 200 miles from shore and set up a system of regional fishery councils to regulate the industry. But the

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washington notebook

law also provided government tax breaks for US fisher- sold at retail for nearly $4 billion, supporting more than men to upgrade their boats, leading to more overfishing. 73,000 fishing industry jobs. By contrast, the state with the Fish stocks continued to drop, a Commerce Depart ment largest fishery in the United States, California, saw fishing history of the New England fishing industry contends, “in contribute $4.7 billion to its economy and support the wake of ever-advancing harvesting technology, and 160,000 jobs. Florida was the only other state to see more failure of the management system to take steps necessary economic impact from fishing than Massachusetts. to rebuild the populations.” Shelley acknowledges that the catch share system will Environmentalists say rebuilding began in earnest in cause at least some short-term pain for many fishermen, 2006 when Congress revised the Magnuson-Stevens law, and that it will lead to some consolidation in the industry. But he says that’s nothing new. Previous restrictions limiting the The fishing industry is still number of days Massachusetts big business in Massachusetts. fishermen could be at sea had the effect of cutting the number of and set a strict deadline to end overfishing by this year. active boats in half between 2001 and 2009, from about The Obama administration has pushed regional fishery 1,200 to around 600, he points out. councils to adopt the catch share system, which has seen Advocates of catch shares hope that they will ultimately success in other fisheries. lead to not only greater efficiency, but a healthier fishery, All this comes at a time when the fishing industry, albeit one that supports fewer fishermen. They figure it whatever its struggles, is still big business in the Bay State. may only take a few years before Massachusetts begins to According to a federal report issued last year by the Com - see healthier stocks of key species like cod and flounder. merce Department’s National Marine Fisheries Service, And environmentalists aren’t without allies in the fish - Massachusetts fishermen pulled in 326 million pounds of ing community. In fact, it was the 2,500-member Cape fish, worth $400 million, in 2008. The state’s fish were Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen’s Association that first

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washington notebook

lobbied the regional fishery council to adopt an experi- pushed Commerce in January to allow fishermen who’d mental catch share system in 2004. The association says it missed a deadline another chance to appeal their cases. sees benefits in a system that allows fishermen to fish Locke initially turned down the request, enraging the when they want, eliminating the rush to sea that occurred law makers and Patrick. “It’s a bad decision. He does have when old rules set specific fishing seasons. And they hope discretion and it’s unfortunate he’s chosen not to use it,” that will also reduce temporary price fluctuations that Tierney said at the time. accompanied seasonal oversupply. Patrick wrote directly to the president later that month, Environmentalists worry, though, that the system asking him to overrule Locke. “The fishing families of could fail if there isn’t enough enforcement of the quotas. Massa chusetts deserve better,” he wrote. Only 30 percent of Massa chu setts boats are staffed with In March, Locke and Lubchenco eased the appeal pro - observers, leading to ample opportunity to cheat. cess after a meeting with Kerry. The arrival of new White Heightened enforcement is not in the offing, given the pressure Bay State lawmakers are ‘The fishing families of bringing on the Com merce Depar tment to ease off. And not Massachusetts deserve better,’ without cause, environmentalists Patrick wrote to Obama. admit, given last year’s report by the department’s inspector general, an independent House chief of staff William Daley has also given the law- watchdog at the agency, which found that Commerce had makers some renewed hope. Daley, as commerce secre- been particularly tough on Massachusetts fishermen tary in the 1990s under President Clinton, worked with who’d violated fishing limits. The report prompted the them on easing restrictions on harvesting scallops. Frank agency to reassign its top enforcement officer in the state. says he expects he’ll prove receptive again. “We are talking Bay State lawmakers led by Tierney, Frank, and Kerry about working people feeling some pain,” says Frank.

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what works

Piloting global payments The new prix fixe system for health care reimbursement is getting a try-out in Lowell, but key details are still murky by pippin ross

gerri vaughan, the executive director of the insurers, and consumers if this experiment in Lowell General Physicians Hospital Organization, delivering health care services takes off. answers a question about the state’s rush to em - To explain how the global payment approach brace a global payment system with a question. “If differs from the current fee-for-service system, Pat the patient comes, how do we deal with Pat?” Pickul returns to his hypothetical crash-test patient she asks. Dr. David Pickul, seated across from Pat. “Three years ago,” he says, “Pat comes to me. Vaughan in a conference room at Lowell General, I don’t know her. She just shifted insurers, and offers a choice. “We could pull out a pen and in 30 I’m her third primary care doctor in about nine seconds order a long list of expensive inconsisten- months. Because of the system, her medical histo- cies and redundancies. Or we could own Pat’s ry hasn’t been passed along from her last doctor. problem and deploy clinical integration.” The effort to retrieve it would take forever. Her To an observer, the exchange between Pickul opening line is: ‘Doc, I need a MRI.’ My response? and Vaughan comes across as a parody on doctor- An MRI for what?’” ing from the hospital sitcom Scrubs. But this is no When he learns Pat is struggling with head - joke. Pickul says the global payment approach is aches, Pickul says he would basically start from an overdue attempt to change the way health care scratch, ordering a battery of tests to find out if is delivered. “We’re attempting to fix a system that she actually needs a MRI. After all the tests, the is broken, unsustainable, and can’t continue on need for an expensive MRI test may still be un - the path it’s on,” he says. clear. “Because she wants it and because I’m an Massachusetts led the way on expanding health internist, not a neurologist, I do the paperwork care coverage through the 2006 law signed by then- for the MRI because under that system, the easi- Gov. Mitt Romney. The state is now trying to lead est way to get her to a head doc is with the MRI the way on cost containment. Pickul, Vaughan, results,” he says. After weeks of tests for which Pat and Lowell General are in year two of a Blue Cross makes copayments, the MRI results are compelling Blue Shield of Massachusetts experiment to change enough to convince Pickul to send her to a neu- the way health care providers are paid for their rologist. After that, she’s largely the neurologist’s services. The state’s largest health plan is working responsibility. with a total of 12 hospital systems and 7,000 doc- The compassion-filled teamwork seen on TV tors that are providing care to 500,000 patients. dramas like Grey’s Anatomy rarely happens with Instead of paying for each test or office visit pro- the fee-for-service system. But Pickul says it’s begin- vided, Blue Cross is now paying a lump sum per ning to gain traction with global payments. “It’s patient. It’s like ordering a prix fixe meal instead freeing us to do consults with each other, to get of a la carte. away from endless and often pointless tests,” says Blue Cross says the new approach is promot- Pickul. ing more coordinated patient care and has the Under a global payment system, insurers work potential to reduce costs, although it hasn’t result- with frontline providers and administrators to ed in any savings yet. Massa chusetts, a major med- pre determine a fixed payment with monthly ical center where health care costs are among the adjustments that applies to the age, gender, health highest in the nation, is an ideal laboratory for the history, and health status of every patient. Setting global payment experiment. But no one is quite those individual rates correctly is the key to the sure who will be the winners and losers among success of the system, but it’s also the part that doctors, hospitals, community health centers, none of the parties will talk about. What, for

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example, is the correct rate for a person in their 20s with relatively few health issues? How does that compare to an obese patient with chronic health problems? One thing Blue Cross, Pickul, and Vaughan will talk about—often—is how global payment is not capitation. That’s the term for the 1990s attempt to control health care costs by capping how much health care providers were paid for patients. Capitation, however, provided little incentive for doctors to do anything other than hold costs down by ordering fewer services. Pickul says global payment offers incentives to provide quality care as well as avoid costly medical procedures unless they are necessary. If the cost of Pat’s care is less Physician bonuses are, some than predicted in the flat-rate global payment, the Lowell group gets to say, a cause for concern. pocket the difference, and each doctor receives 10 per- divulge any specifics. cent of the budget’s total savings. Since the contract The physician bonuses that are part of a global payment began, the Lowell network has earned substantial bonus- system have been flagged by some policy experts as a poten- es, meaning the cost of care has been less than the pay- tial cause for concern. Could an evil Dr. No pad his pocket ments, but those overseeing the project declined to by giving Pat the patient Advil instead of angioplasty?

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Vaughan says global payment systems are designed specifically to avoid that sort of scenario. She says health care providers have to prove their patients’ health is authen- tically better, or at least improving. “We’re not talking MassINC’s random surveys and phone calls to patients,” says Vaughan. It’s now a score-driven team sport in which the higher the score, the higher the income. The scores are CITIZENS’ based on 64 measurements established by the US Department of Health and Human Services covering the quality and results of the care a patient receives out of the CIRCLE hospital in the form of office visits and things like preventive care screenings and what happens during and after hospitalization. Now, Dr. Pickul’s financial incentive comes directly from delivering good care, not excessive services. When it’s documented that a patient is regularly given the preventive care recommended for their age group, such as mammograms or colonoscopies, that translates as points. If a diabetic is receiving regular outpatient blood-sugar and cholesterol screening from a nurse prac- titioner and isn’t having any problems, that nets a maxi- mum score of five. Scores can also be lowered by incom- petency or accidents. If Pat the patient was readmitted to the hospital because she got a bacterial infection after her brain biopsy, that brings down a group’s entire score. “If I actually lower Pat’s high blood pressure? That’s a shot- score!” says Pickul, sounding like a hockey announcer calling a goal. “If I haven’t called Pat in for a mammogram for three years? That’s bad.” Dana Safran, senior vice president at Blue Cross Blue COLLABORATION. Shield of Massachusetts, says the global payment approach offers health care providers the right incentives. “What INVESTMENT. we have to understand is that there are perverse incentives in the current system,” she says. “We created an ‘if-you’re- paying-I’ll-have-the-lobster’ mentality.” IMPACT. Safran says the outcomes after one year under global payment are where Blue Cross expected to be in three or four years. “The amount of money being spent hasn’t changed yet, but the outcomes are serious testimony to MassINC’s Citizens’ Circle brings together the fact that more—in tests and doctors and visits—isn’t exceptional people who care about improving always better,” she says. “We’re getting a lot more for our the quality of life in Massachusetts. These money than we expected.” Safran says Blue Cross padded first-year global pay- valued supporters are leaders in a wide range ment budgets to entice hospitals and doctors to sign on. of fields, including business, philanthropy, She stressed that the current goal is not to actually reduce labor and government. costs, but to cut in half the rate of growth in medical costs after five years. For more information on joining Gov. Deval Patrick has filed legislation to move state the Citizens’ Circle—please call government’s payments for health care services in the global payment direction and to encourage the rest of the Lauren Louison at 617.224.1613. health care industry to follow. He’s also addressing the cost issue more directly by proposing that state regulators be given the power to reject health plan premium increases

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based on a review of their underlying costs, essentially much public outreach on global payment because the what hospitals and doctors are charging for their services. program was developed on a short timetable and received Patrick says he’s seen waste in the health care system up such an overwhelming response from providers. Even so, close. “When my mother was suffering from cancer and they say patient care experience measures they tabulate hepatitis, the lack of coordination between the hospital, haven’t shown much change, indicating patients haven’t the primary care physician, the long-term facility, and reacted negatively. Officials at the health plan say cover- then hospice was profound,” he says. age discussions are better left to patients and their physi- The biggest blunder so far under global payment at cians. In fact, the Blue Cross customer service line says: Lowell General is that health care consumers were not briefed on the changes. “Poor Pat doesn’t have a clue what’s ‘What’s happening here is going on,” Vaughn says. “The beginning was incredibly bumpy,” adds Pickul. “In so logical and simple.’ the HMO world, patients were trained to pick their doc- “Your primary care doctor knows what’s best for you.” tor for this and that. Need a referral? Just call my office Lots of kinks in the system are still being worked out and I’ll give you one. In this huge redesign, the consumers, and new technologies and copayment incentives are patients, and businesses were seriously left out of the fact being deployed to steer patients to lower-cost providers. that we’re not doing it like that anymore.” But Blue Cross executives and many of the health care Vaughn and Pickul attribute any first-year bumps to providers involved in the project say enormous progress patients feeling “locked-down” after decades of buffet-style is being made. Pickul leans forward to make a point with medical care. “They’re the buyers,” Vaughn says of patients, the intensity of Dr. House having a diagnostic epiphany. “and Blue Cross Blue Shield forgot to explain what they’re “What’s happening in this hospital for doctors and buying.” patients is so logical and simple, it’s shocking it’s taken Blue Cross officials say they didn’t get a chance to do this long.”

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Who does he think he is? Dan Winslow, a veteran Massachusetts Republican turned freshman state rep, is shaking up the State House with a flurry of policy proposals and a scathing critique of the Beacon Hill status quo.

BY PAUL McMORROW | PHOTOGRAPHS BY MICHAEL MANNING

it’s an early March afternoon and a gaggle of reporters are waiting outside the House chamber. The focus of their interest finally steps out and obliges the group. He and the governor, whatever their differences, both agree on the importance of unions to the public workforce, he says. It shouldn’t have been a remarkable scene. But this was not the House Speaker holding forth on the issue of the day or even one of his leadership deputies or a committee chairman. The man of the moment was a freshman state rep, and a lowly Republican to boot. On Beacon Hill, freshman reps are expected to be

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Wi “so con far bu

seen but not heard. And Republican freshmen are barely as chief legal counsel to former gov- seen at all. But Dan Winslow, a judge-turned-Romney- ernor Mitt Rom ney, and was the top chief-counsel-turned-Republican lawmaker, is seen every - lawyer for Scott Brown’s successful where these days. And heard. He’s organizing press con- Senate campaign. He could easily be ferences, calling in to radio shows, appearing on televi- working in Wash ing ton, DC, right sion, and jousting with the lefties on Blue Mass Group. now or sitting in a downtown office He’s on Twitter, playfully likening the House Speaker and tower, charging several hundred dol- Senate President to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il. lars per hour for legal work. Instead, And it seems like he’s getting himself quoted in a news Winslow left his partnership at the story every day. white-shoe law firm Duane Morris Winslow’s antics are in some ways a throwback—not to run for the House seat Brown once to a musty time best forgotten but a period perhaps worth held. His immediate reward was a reclaiming. In the 1970s and 1980s, the culture of Beacon windowless office in a dark corner of Hill was more open. Reformers on both sides of the aisle the State House basement, a cubby gained traction and climbed the political ladder on the widely believed to be one of the power of their proposals. That’s how Michael Dukakis, building’s worst workspaces. Barney Frank, Andrew Card, and Andrew Natsios all rose It’s difficult for a pen of concrete within and, ultimately, out of the Legislature. The State and laminate wood paneling to con- House’s power structure is far more rigid these days. Com - tain Winslow. From his little subter- mittee deliberations are largely perfunctory. The Speaker ranean office, Winslow is cranking out and Senate president set the legislative agenda, and the legislation and carving out a unique party faithful either follow along or dissent at their own place for himself—that of the defiant peril. It’s not a model that Winslow is quietly abiding. cage-rattler—in the largest fresh- At today’s installment of the Dan Winslow Show, an man class Beacon Hill has seen in Associated Press reporter has some questions about a two decades. Whether he will end Scot Lehigh column in that morning’s Boston Globe, one up regarded as blunt-talking flash- that dubbed a Winslow proposal to rein in collective bar- in-the-pan or a model for a more gaining “the most interesting notion I’ve heard during the free wheeling style in the Legislature pyrotechnics about public-employee unions.” The seeds is unclear. But Winslow has the for the column may have been planted a few days before, nerve to think that ideas should matter to the legislative when Winslow used the hyperventilation over Wisconsin process, and he’s going put that notion to the test. Gov. Scott Walker’s union-busting to crash onto Blue “I don’t need the job,” says Winslow, who hails from an Mass Group, the left-leaning political blog. He pitched a bill that would crib a 1980s-vintage law Barney Frank spon- “His enthusiasm is not sored to rein in union costs at the MBTA, take that system statewide, and maybe contrived. He’s always save a few hundred million dollars along the way. Winslow argued his case to the asking, ‘Why don’t we do lefty netroots online, and then offered to hash out the state’s full range of maladies this?’ It never starts with, with them, over dinner and a moderate quantity of drinks. In the weeks that fol- ‘We can’t do this because…’” lowed, Winslow’s collective bargaining proposal led to a union-led occupation of his office and old-line Yankee family and evinces an air of noblesse oblige to a State House rally at which the freshman lawmaker without the stuffy trappings. “If decent, honest, and hard- was labeled a “yahoo,” a “right-wing idiot,” and an “ass- working people don’t get involved in government, gov- hole,” and threatened with expulsion to Rhode Island. ernment won’t be decent, honest, and hard-working. If All of this—the media spotlight, the bold ideas, and good people stand on the sidelines, our democracy will the relentless gossip that follows—is stuff Beacon Hill devolve to the lowest common denominator of talent and hasn’t seen from a new lawmaker in decades. But Winslow motive. And I refuse to do that.” isn’t just another legislative newbie. He is the former pre- “His enthusiasm is not contrived,” says Daniel Haley, a siding justice at the Wrentham Dis trict Court. He served Boston attorney and former Romney aide who worked

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Winslow describes his politics as “socially tolerant and fiscally conservative.” His style thus far in office has been anything but restrained.

with Winslow on Brown’s Senate campaign. “He’s exactly there. Winslow, who is 52, grew up in Amherst, and wound the same one-on-one as he is when 10 people are standing up in Norfolk after graduating from Tufts and Boston around him. He’s always asking, ‘Why don’t we do this?’ It College Law School. never starts with, ‘We can’t do this because….’ It’s always Winslow’s name was floated twice in the early 1990s as reasons why something can be done, should be done.” a possible pick for US Attorney. He was named to the state bench in 1995, after Weld’s reelection. He gave up that lifetime post in 2002, to join the Romney adminis- ROBED REFORMER tration as the governor’s chief legal counsel. Winslow left Much of Winslow’s career has been spent behind the scenes, the Romney administration in early 2005, becoming a first as a lawyer for the Massachusetts Republican Party, partner at the law firm Duane Morris; he’s now a senior and later as a gubernatorial aide. He led the GOP’s chal- counsel at Proskauer Rose, where his practice includes lit- lenges to legislative redistricting following the 1985 and igation and corporate strategy services. But politics is in 1990 Censuses, and sued the Governor’s Council to over- his blood, and along with his legislative duties he remains turn a string of judicial confirmations in the last days of employed as the Brown campaign’s counsel. “When you the Dukakis administration. He was Gov. Bill Weld’s choice run, the first call you make is to Dan,” says Charley Man - to take over the state party chairmanship in 1992 (he was ning, a Republican political consultant. “He knows more outmaneuvered in that contest), and served as legal coun- than anybody else—all the arcane rules.” sel during Romney’s 1994 campaign against Ted Kennedy. During Winslow’s seven years as a judge, he won some Winslow’s family pedigree stretches back to the early tabloid notoriety by proposing that repeat drunken dri- days of the Plymouth Colony (an uncle far up the family vers have orange warning stickers affixed to their vehicles. tree arrived on the Mayflower), but the married father of (He tested the idea by placing one on the back of his three lacks the old money and political lineage of the Volvo, and then studying drivers’ reactions.) He also spear- Cabots and Lodges. Winslow’s father fought in Korea, headed an effort to expand jury trials beyond Norfolk then attended UMass Amherst on the GI bill and settled County’s Quincy and Dedham courthouses. The Wren -

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tham courthouse, how ever, wasn’t built to accommodate juries. Elissa Flynn- Poppey, a lawyer who in terned for then- Judge Winslow, recalls him arriving early and in his robe, moving around courthouse furniture. But the biggest stir he caused while on the bench was among his own judicial brethren. Winslow won the Pioneer Institute’s 1998 Better Government Com - petition for a paper that decried the judiciary’s case management system. That paper invited stiff blowback from judges who perceived personal criticism in Win slow’s analysis. He was also criticized for suggesting that judicial funding should be tied to courthouse caseloads —a challenge to the Legislature and to individual judges’ political power. While with Romney, he made the level-funding of the judicial budget contingent upon the collection of $40 million in fees and fines, and drew a sharp rebuke from the chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court for his troubles. Now, Winslow notes, several of his case management reforms have been implemented, courthouse budgets are Winslow, a former judge, calls the judiciary “even allocated based on caseloads, and Gov. more hidebound than Deval Patrick has increased the judiciary’s the legislative process.” fee collection target to $47 million (to plaudits from the SJC). The lessons are twofold, he says. One, “the judiciary is even more hide- icism from the right. Winslow appeared at a state con- bound than the legislative process,” he says, so the House vention of justices of the peace, and told them they could won’t be the toughest institution he has taken on. And not refuse to perform same-sex marriages. He also trav- two, “if you put your head down and you’re willing to do eled the state, training municipal clerks on the adminis- the work, and weather the barbs and arrows, you can get tration of same-sex marriages. a lot done.” “He worked with an administration that was hostile to equality, and in that hostile environment, he managed to quietly effectuate changes on behalf of marriage equality,” MARRIAGE MAN says Arline Isaacson, co-chair of the Massachusetts Gay The governor’s chief legal counsel is normally not a posi- and Lesbian Political Caucus. tion that generates publicity. But that mission was thrown Winslow, who describes his personal politics as “socially for a loop in late 2003, when the SJC’s Goodridge decision tolerant and fiscally prudent,” downplays that interpreta- declared the prohibition of same-sex marriages unconsti- tion. He says town clerks and justices of the peace took tutional. Rom ney was an ardent opponent of same-sex mar- the same oath Romney did, and his legal guidance to them riage, and his national political ambitions were clear, but was simple—follow the law when you agree with it, and it was up to him to enforce Goodridge. Winslow became the follow the law when you don’t. administration’s point man on the issue, and its public face. “There was spin that Romney was backing away and Citing attorney-client confidentiality, Winslow won’t softening his position, and that was not the case,” Winslow discuss the administration’s internal response to Goodridge. says. “The governor had a choice. He could be like George However, the moves Winslow made publicly, in Romney’s Wallace and block the entrance to the college. And he was name, drew praise from gay advocates, and stinging crit- criticized for not doing that. He did the lawful thing. I

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think it bespoke his integrity.” great hope, fizzled out. The party actually lost a seat in the Much has been made of Winslow’s exit from the state Senate, reducing its caucus to four members in a Romney administration. Some Beacon Hill wags believe body of 40. there was a split between the two men in the aftermath of Those shortcomings leave the House as the Repub li - Goodridge, pointing to the fact that Romney replaced cans’ last and only outlet for influencing state policy for Winslow with a former Connecticut lawmaker who had the next two years. November’s election doubled the GOP’s sponsored a defense of marriage act. Others say Winslow numbers in the House, as Republican candidates knocked showed too much ambition and independence, and was off 11 incumbent Democrats and claimed four open seats too cozy with the press, for Romney’s liking. Beacon Hill previously held by Democrats. Winslow is one of 20 fresh- watchers note that Romney recently gave $5,000 to union- man Republican reps on Beacon Hill. The turnover in the busting Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, but he never con- Legislature was so great that House leaders had to move tributed to Winslow’s legislative campaign. Winslow sim- the bullpen, normally a fourth-floor holding pen for new ply says his plan was to serve two years on Beacon Hill lawmakers, to two large hearing rooms in the State House and then return to the bench. basement. Depending on whom you ask, when Winslow’s time in Even with their November gains, Republicans still only the governor’s office was over, Romney was either unable control 20 percent of the seats in the House. However, or unwilling to steer Winslow through a repeat judicial Massachusetts has one of the nation’s least competitive state legislatures, and any turnover tends to spawn uncertainty. November’s election Winslow calls himself “opened up the majority to the idea that they are vulnerable,” says Brad Jones, the an environmentalist, and Republican House minority leader. “People are hearing footsteps. The Speaker isn’t is the only Republican going to bring up votes that he thinks might jeopardize his members.” cosponsor of legislation to House Speaker Robert DeLeo has already vowed to close a more than $1.5 billion expand the bottle bill. budget gap without tax increases. He has also begun likening new fees, such as an confirmation by the Governor’s Council. At the time, expansion of the bottle bill, to taxes. He’s fending off the Governor’s Councilor Christopher Iannella told the Globe Republicans while fighting on their fiscal turf. votes were lining up against Winslow because “there is a The defensive stance adopted by House leadership sense that [Romney’s staff] feel they are better than us.” should benefit a legislator like Winslow, who campaigned Iannella shrugs that off today. “It’s always rocky with every- largely on fiscal issues. A good chunk of the freshman one,” he says. “That was so long ago, I don’t know why rep’s proposed legislation is aimed at lowering costs and they pulled his name.” boosting the volume of cash in the state’s economy. Win - But Winslow is convinced there was an anti-Romney slow has filed legislation that would allow residents to agenda at work. “There was a real negative energy level in write off sales tax expenditures on their income tax claims; the building against the governor, against his senior team, establish free enterprise zones in municipalities; create a and I was it,” he says. “I wasn’t convinced I would be con- home refinancing guarantee under Mass Housing; and firmed, so I asked the governor not to nominate me.” allow municipalities to bond out Community Preser vation Act revenue through the state treasury, thereby slashing administrative costs. He believes the governor’s office GOP PRAGMATIST should aggressively target entitlement fraud, and he wants The 2010 election cycle was supposed to be a breakthrough to push the forward-funding of labor contracts on the year for Massachusetts Republicans. Scott Brown’s shel- municipal level. Then, of course, there’s that proposal to lacking of Attorney General Martha Coakley gave the party expand management rights to local and state employers. a new base of volunteers and activists, energized downbeat These are clearly the proposals of a guy who ran with town committees across the state, and drew out dozens of an R next to his name on the ballot. Even so, Winslow isn’t new candidates. The GOP challenged the state’s Demo - a GOP caricature. He labels himself an environmentalist, cratic establishment across the board. And they suffered and is the only Re pub lican cosponsor of the expanded stinging defeats at nearly every turn, including the gover- bottle bill. During the campaign, he rode his bicycle door nor’s race, where Charlie Baker, long the Republicans’ next to door, rather than drive. (He also used the bike to film a

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DEPOSIT &#!3(-!.!'%-%.4s2%3)$%.4)!,-/24'!'% INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT &42534s#/--%2#)!,"!.+).' campaign video spoofing Brown’s famous truck ad.) “When he was in the Romney administration, he wasn’t perceived as an ideologue,” says David Guarino, a veteran Beacon Hill operative. “He was viewed as somebody who could be worked with.” As for Winslow’s early moves in elected office, Guarino says the amount of legislation Win slow is now pursuing, and the traction he’s getting, are “virtually unheard of” for a freshman. He’s getting that traction, in part, because Winslow is relentless about putting his ideas in front of people. He returns reporters’ phone calls, and when he does, he says something interesting. He’s on Facebook and Twitter, even TRUE LEADERSHIP FOR though they get him in trouble sometimes (like that North Korea crack, or a lead-balloon joke he Tweeted about how COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT a global warming symposium had been snowed out). REQUIRES INNOVATION AND And then there’s Blue Mass Group. Winslow began COMMITMENT TO LOCAL posting on the website, under a pseudonym, in 2006. He outed himself during his legislative race, and he’s currently ORGANIZATIONS LIKE OURS. the only legislative Republican engaging the liberal-leaning THAT IS WHY WE PARTNERED site. “He’s been persistent about participating, and he’s WITH BOSTON PRIVATE always saying something constructive and interesting,” says David Kravitz, one of Blue Mass Group’s editors. “He BANK & TRUST doesn’t do drive-by posts. He’ll come back and answer some really pointed questions. He’s really using the site as a source of dialogue, rather than a dumping ground for press releases.”

MAP-MAKING ALLIANCES For all his optimism about the ability to bring good ideas to the legislative arena, however, in the most far-reaching political fight happening on Beacon Hill right now, Winslow is participating as a civilian, not as a legislator. A bipartisan advocacy group, Fair Districts Mass, head- Boston Private Bank & Trust Company is recognized as a community partner committed to creating ed by longtime GOP gadfly Jack E. Robinson, has retained innovative solutions to help revitalize local Winslow the lawyer to champion its cause in the upcom- neighborhoods. At each of our ofﬁces, we offer ing redistricting battle. That means Winslow the lawmak- a full range of personal, commercial and investment er will recuse himself from redistricting deliberations at and trust services with the individual attention the State House. He will vote up or down on the House’s that makes private banking with us distinctive. On a deeper level, we make the connections that count– new legislative map, but he won’t be involved with state connections to the ﬁnancial expertise for which Rep. Mike Moran’s map-making committee. Instead, he’s Boston is known, and a personal connection to each laying the groundwork for a possible federal lawsuit chal- of our community partners that goes far beyond the lenging Moran’s maps. sum of our transactions. “Redistricting is, ultimately, an exercise in incumbent protection,” Winslow says. He wants to wipe the current legislative map clean, and believes that wouldn’t happen if he were working as the Republican Party’s redistricting point man, as he did following the 1985 and 1990 Censuses. Please contact Mark Thompson, CEO & President (617) 912.1919 “There’s always this disconnect between incumbent pro- or [email protected] tection and party growth,” he says. Winslow says Fair Y Districts Mass will push for what he calls fair, constitu- a www.bostonprivatebank.com tional districts—districts that open up Congress and the State House to new challengers from both political par-

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ties. In other words, Winslow could wind up angering not already losing one congressional district in this redistrict- only Democrats but fellow Republicans as well. ing round) and open up electoral opportunities for “I’m of the view that the whole issue of partisanship is Repub licans outside Suffolk County. That’s what hap- getting a little old,” he says. “I don’t like the notion that pened after the 1990 Census, when Win slow helped push you lose because I win. Redistricting is the best means for new districts that ultimately led to the election of two Repub lican congressmen, Peter Blute and Peter Torkildsen, and competi- In the upcoming redistricting tive contests on the South Shore and in the Merrimack Valley. battle, Winslow could end “He’s playing the hand that works for Republicans and works for min - up angering not only orities,” says Joyce Ferriabough- Bolling, whose Black Political Task Democrats but his Republican Force partnered with Winslow and state Republicans to influence the new colleagues as well. legislative maps that followed the 1990 Census. Winslow got four com- a political paradigm shift, and if there’s ever a state in petitive congressional districts, and Ferriabough-Bolling need of a paradigm shift, it’s ours.” got strong minority voter influence over the Eighth Con - The group’s main focus will be the creation of a majority- gres sional seat currently held by Michael Capuano. “I minority congressional district anchored in Suffolk County, don’t see him as a soldier of fortune for diversity rights,” and compact, logical districts throughout the rest of the she says. But Ferriabough-Bolling thinks he was also happy state. Such an approach would drastically alter the cur- to advance that goal. “He’s for minority and Republican rent congressional district boundaries (Massa chusetts is [advancement]—he believes in both,” she says.

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NO TIME TO LOSE that it was noteworthy. As far as Winslow is concerned, it Winslow called his first press conference as a state rep shouldn’t be. weeks before be was even sworn in. He figured most peo- “I think the Legislature hasn’t lived up to its fullest ple were focused on shopping in the last few days before institutional potential as a place for debate and discus- Christmas, which would make it as good a time as any to sion, as an incubator for ideas,” he says. kick off a debate about lowering the sales tax. So on the Winslow has already pledged to serve three terms, at Wednesday before Christmas, on an afternoon when the most. The self-imposed term limit “lights a fire under me,” State House was emptying for the end-of-year break, a he says. If he were on a 20-year plan, he says, he wouldn’t handful of newly-elected Republicans called a press conference outside the House minority leader’s office and Winslow works the announced their intention to push for a sales tax credit in the upcoming legisla- mainstream press and social tive session. The freshmen, led by Winslow, said they would be issuing $2 media channels relentlessly. billion worth of economic growth and cost-cutting proposals in the coming It sometimes has the feel of months, and this was the opening shot. A handful of reporters listened, shameless self-promotion. scribbled notes, and then asked a question: Where was the minority leader, Brad Jones? Why were feel as much pressure to get ideas to the House floor. the freshmen calling this presser on their own? The sight “I talk to folks who tell me they’ve been here for 24 of four freshmen legislators (who hadn’t even been sworn years,” Winslow says. “Well, respectfully, what are you in yet) talking shop and issuing press releases was so rare going to do in the next two that you haven’t done in the

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previous 24? The people who have been there the longest, head up and you start putting ideas out, that’s when you you’ve never heard of, because they’ve never done any- get the criticism and the pushback and the pressure.” thing! Why are they there, other than to consume oxygen That pushback and pressure are already mounting. It’s and to pander to the special interests that sustain them in not because any one of Winslow’s 19 bills has angered their roles?” some great and powerful lobby on Beacon Hill. It’s the He pauses. The man of big ideas can also throw a sharp pace he’s working at, his refusal to refuse comment, and elbow, sometimes before he even realizes it. “They’re all his ever-growing pile of press clips—that’s what’s catch- nice people,” he continues. “When they read this, they’re ing his colleagues’ attention. all going to be mad at me. That’s fine.” Legislators and staff have taken to asking reporters His legislative colleagues have more than the occa- what office Winslow is running for. There is no shortage sional barb to stew over. In his constant churning out of of theories. Some believe he’s angling for governor, or proposals and policy views, Winslow is working the attorney general, or secretary of state. Others believe he mainstream press and social media channels relentlessly wants to depose Brad Jones and seize control of the House (he now boasts more than 1,000 Facebook “friends”). It Republican caucus. Still others think it’s about revenge— sometimes has the feel of shameless self-promotion, and those goons on the Governor’s Council wouldn’t let him some of Winslow’s colleagues undoubtedly see it that back on the bench, so now he’s going to make life miser- way. But in a body that has become so sclerotic with top- able for every Democrat on Beacon Hill. down authority, a media-savvy outside strategy like On the topic of any political ambitions he may harbor, Winslow’s might be the only way to get traction on an the usually loquacious lawmaker is a man of few words. issue. “I’m running for reelection in 2012,” he says. “The easiest thing to do in government is nothing,” Maybe Winlsow does have his eye on higher office. Or Winslow says. “People expect nothing of you in govern- maybe the very fact that there’s so much gossip equating ment. They’ll not criticize you for doing nothing, because legislative vigor with power lust just means Winlsow’s that’s the level of expectation. It’s when you stick your critique of Beacon Hill is dead-on.

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Reigning supreme The state’s little known clerk-magistrates have lifetime tenure and virtually unchecked power over many aspects of the operation of Massachusetts courthouses.

BY JACK SULLIVAN

Ronald Arruda is the clerk-magistrate of the Bristol Juvenile Court, which is a little like saying he is the king of his court. He was appointed to the job by former Gov. Edward King in 1982 and, while six governors have come and gone since then, Arruda hasn’t budged. The 66-year- old clerk-magistrate can keep earning his $110,000-a-year salary as long as he wants because the job is the only one in state government that comes with lifetime job security and no mandatory retirement age. Some of his fellow clerks work into their 80s; some even into their 90s. Arruda’s 20-person kingdom may be small, but he has practically absolute control over it. Arruda, who has six assistants, has used that power to hire into assistant clerk positions Angelo Ligotti, the son of Hingham District Court clerk- magistrate Joseph Ligotti, and Susan Correia, the daughter of former House majority leader and Fall River mayor Robert Correia. He also hired Mark Tobin, the son of longtime Quincy District Court clerk-magistrate Arthur Tobin, who has since transferred to Norfolk Juvenile Court in his hometown of Quincy.

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Clerk-magistrates have authority to issue search and arrest warrants, set bail, and rule on other matters, along with serving as the courthouse traffic cop, directing the flow of cases.

Arruda says it’s “just a coincidence” that he hired rela- soever to get them out of the office…They have, pretty tives of fellow clerks and politicians. A former probation much, little fiefdoms.” officer himself, Arruda says there is no similarity between The keys to these kingdoms tend to go to politically con- the situation at his office and the widespread patronage nected people. Despite an increase in the judicial powers hiring at the Probation Department that has spawned given to clerks, there is no requirement that a clerk-mag- numerous task forces and law enforcement investiga- istrate or the assistants have a law degree—or any college tions. “There is no problem here,” he says. “We don’t have degree, for that matter. that situation like they do in Probation.” There are 72 clerk-magistrates across Massachusetts who Yet there are remarkable similarities between the over- have been appointed by governors and another 10 acting sight of Probation and the clerk-magistrate offices across the state. At Probation, the Legislature in 2001 gave the commis- ‘There’s virtually no way sioner exclusive authority to hire, fire, assign, and discipline within the Proba tion whatsoever to get them out Department, which employs 2,000 people. Less well known is the fact that the of the office… They have, Legislature at the same time took away from judges the power to hire assistant pretty much, little fiefdoms.’ clerks at the court and gave that authority to the 82 clerk-magistrates. The clerk-magistrates now clerks who have been appointed on a temporary basis by have the power to convey lifetime job security on their each court division’s chief justice. Of the 72 gubernatorial 400 assistant clerks. They also oversee thousands of other appointments, 25 percent have political ties to the Legis - clerical staff. lature or the executive branch. At least six are themselves “It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever,” says Linda former representatives or senators, three are related to cur- Carlisle, a former member of the Court Management Ad - rent or former reps or senators, six are former legislative visory Board, which advises judges on the best way to aides, and three are former administration officials. operate the court system. “There’s virtually no way what- Arthur Tobin, the 81-year-old clerk-magistrate at Quincy

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District Court and a former mayor of Quincy, city coun- of the Legislature. In Massachusetts, there are elected clerks cilor, and state senator, says the calls to him from law- in the county Superior Courts and appointed clerks in the makers for courthouse jobs have slowed, mostly because district, housing and juvenile courts, as well as an appointed of a court hiring freeze that began in 2008. But he says he land recorder. The duties and responsibilities are fairly has no doubt that once the money begins flowing again, equal, as is the pay, but over the years the Legislature has the phone will start ringing. expanded the powers of the clerks and shielded them from “People who serve in the public office respond to their oversight by the judiciary—and nearly everyone else. constituency,” Tobin says unapologetically. “The legislators While the Trial Court’s Chief Justice for Administra - feel it’s part of their job…It goes on in private industry, too.” tion and Management, known as the CJAM, is the titular Tobin admits “there might be a couple people” in his head of clerks, in reality, they are their own bosses. The own clerk’s office who got jobs through his intervention law states that the powers of the CJAM, the chief justice when he was in the Legislature more than three decades of the district court, and the first justice of each district ago, maybe a few others who have since retired. Tobin will court “shall not include the authority or power to exer- not say if he influenced the hiring decision of his son, Mark, cise, supersede, limit, prevent the exercise of or other wise or his transfer from Bristol to Quincy. But he recalls a affect any of the powers, duties and responsibilities of the conversation with former Patriot Ledger publisher Pre scott clerks or registers of probate in any general or special law, Low about his ascension to the top position at the paper. including laws authorizing or governing the selection and “I said to him, ‘Do you think you’d be the publisher if appointment of personnel.” your father didn’t own the paper?’” Tobin says. “It’s part Many clerks are attorneys, but it is not a requirement. of life. It’s the same things in unions, where people get In fact, judges grumble that there are no background jobs for brothers or nephews or cousins. I never did it for requirements at all for clerks even though they deal with a stranger.” the law on a daily basis, including issuing rulings in small claims cases valued as high as $7,000. A couple years ago a “mini-law school” was organized for the clerks to brief NEVER WANT TO LEAVE them on legal issues they needed for their jobs. Clerk-magistrates are like Energizer bunnies. They keep Forty of the 72 appointed clerk-magistrates have law going and going and going, even if perhaps not quite as degrees, while 27 have a bachelor’s or master’s degree in vigorously. It’s not unheard of for clerk-magistrates and non-legal disciplines as their highest level of educational their assistants to serve well into their 80s and beyond. attainment. Five of the current clerk-magistrates have no The record is probably held by the late John E. Flaherty, the four-year degree at all. legendary South Boston District Court clerk-magistrate, Of the 32 clerks that had no law degrees when they who was coming up on 60 years in office when he died at were nominated, 21—or nearly 66 percent—either had the age of 94 in 2005. lawmakers testify on their behalf at their confirmation hear- The oldest current clerk is 82-year-old Thomas Noonan, ing or write letters of recommendation. In contrast, of the the Worcester District Court clerk-magistrate, who was 40 who were lawyers, only 17, or about 42 percent, had appointed by Gov. Michael Dukakis in his first term. The lawmakers stand up for them, and that included seven longest-serving clerk is Henry H. Shultz, who was just 31 nominees who were themselves either former legislators years old when Gov. Francis Sargent appointed him clerk- or aides. magistrate of Newton District Court. He’s been in that The job of clerk-magistrate comes with some attrac- job 40 years. tive perks. For those who started as clerks before 1987, the Records indicate 10 of the appointed clerks are more six-figure salary comes with 30 days of vacation and 30 than 70 years old, the mandatory retirement age for judges. sick days per year, which can accumulate up to 180 days At least six clerks have occupied their positions for 30 years and is paid out of retirement. Those who started after 1987 or more and were in their 30s when they were appointed. get 20 days of vacation to start, increasing to 30 days after In addition to administrative duties, clerk-magistrates nine years. They also receive 15 days of sick time, and un - can issue search warrants and arrest warrants, set bail for used sick days can be carried over year to year without criminal defendants, handle arraignments for misde- limit. Court spokeswoman Joan Kenney said each clerk’s meanors, rule on uncontested motions, and hold hear- office maintains their own attendance and payroll records. ings for moving violations and small claims. They are the Clerks can also make money on the side by setting bail local courts’ traffic cops, working behind the scenes to for defendants arrested after court hours. The bail fee is ensure an orderly flow of cases. $40 per case, which nets the clerks as a group about $2.5 Unlike judges, whose positions are mandated by the million a year. state constitution, clerk-magistrates are a statutory creation A number of current and former elected officials have

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had family members on the payroll, some of whom started as assistants and rose to clerk-magistrate. The most infa- mous was John “Jackie” Bulger, brother of former Senate president William Bulger. Jackie Bulger retired as clerk- magistrate of the Suffolk Juvenile Court, but was stripped of his pension for lying about contact with his fugitive brother, Whitey Bulger. Brian Kearney, husband of former state representative SEND A MESSAGE: Marianne Lewis, is clerk-magistrate in Natick District Court. Margaret Albertson, daughter of former state rep- DON’T CUT resentative and Boston Municipal Court Judge Michael Flaherty, is clerk-magistrate of the South Boston Court. SOCIAL SECURITY Clerks also hire their assistants, many of whom are top- TO REDUCE THE DEFICIT. notch administrators. But the clerk and assistant clerk ranks also include people with strong political connections. Stephen Leduc, who represented Marlborough in the Legis- lature, is now an assistant clerk in Marl bor ough District Make your voice heard. Urge the president Court. Raymond J. Salmon Jr., whose namesake was a clerk- and your members of Congress to protect magistrate in Clinton, is First Assistant Clerk in Leo min - ster District Court. Robert Tomasone, clerk-magistrate in Social Security. Don’t jeopardize the Somerville District Court, is the brother of retired Suffolk retirement security of seniors and future County assistant clerk Anthony Tomasone. generations. For more information, go to Former House majority leader and Fall River mayor aarp.org/ma. Robert Correia, who has a daughter working as an assistant in the Bristol Juvenile Court, also has a daughter-in-law working as an assistant clerk in the Southeast Housing Court in Fall River. Two of the current acting clerks, who are typically drawn from the assistant ranks, also have familiar names. Jody Menard-Parece is the acting clerk in Taunton District Court. She is the daughter of former The greatest return state senator Joan Menard of Fall River, who is now an administrator at Bristol Community College. Charles Ardito on investment. II, the acting clerk of Orleans District Court, is the son of a retired judge. At BNY Mellon, we believe that There is nothing illegal about any of this, nor is it a vio- giving back to the community lation of rules and procedures. Once appointed, a clerk- magistrate has total control over his or her assistants accord- yields the greatest return. ing to statute. The chief justice has 21 days after being notified to veto an appointment and, if no action is taken, the hiring is permanent. Since assistant clerks have no mandatory retirement age, newly appointed clerk-magistrates often have to wait a long time before hiring an assistant. In Boston Municipal Court, for instance, Clerk-Magistrate Daniel J. Hogan says the average length of service for his assistants in the criminal division is about 28 years. “I inherited all of his people, some of whom are extraordinary employees, some of whom are not extraordinary employees,” Hogan says of the staff hired by his predeces- sor. “I had assistant clerks that had been here 50 years.” bnymellon.com One of the assistants was Rosemary T. Carr, whom ©2010 The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation. Hogan knew well. While serving as an assistant clerk and attending law school after his parents retired and moved

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Daniel Hogan, clerk- magistrate of the Boston Report refers to a study issued in 2003 by a Municipal Court, is group headed by Rev. J. Donald Monan, the president of the state’s Association of Magistrates former president of Boston College. and Assistant Clerks. According to records at the committee on professional responsibility, only six ap - pointed clerks-magistrates or assistants have been the formal targets of removal over the years, with no action against one, three resigning or retiring before the hearings were concluded, one being reassigned, and only one being removed for cause. In the fall of 2000, longtime Framing ham District Court Clerk-Magistrate Anthony S. Colonna Sr., then 85 and in the clerk’s job for 37 years, was charged with assaulting a female court employee, Denise Fiandaca. Fiandaca filed a complaint with the Massa - chusetts Commission Against Discrim ina - tion and later filed suit in court saying court officials knew about Colonna’s behaviors for years and did nothing. A judge ruled Colonna, a former state representative, incompetent to stand trial on the charges but he did not retire until five months later when he was again charged with assault, this time for an alleged attack to Florida, Hogan and another sister lived in the three- on several family members with a knife. He had been family South Boston home of Carr and her husband. Carr placed on paid leave but no move was made to bring him is now Hogan’s first assistant, earning $92,000 a year. “The before the committee on professional responsibility. He Carrs took us in and we’ll be forever grateful,” Hogan says. died in October, 2001. The Trial Court made a confidential settlement with Fiandaca in 2004. In 2007, Fox 25 reported that Roxbury clerk-magis- GETTING RID OF THEM IS IMPOSSIBLE trate Michael Neighbors had a spotty attendance record. Once someone is named a clerk or assistant clerk, it’s near- Then, in a follow-up report, the television station obtained ly impossible to remove them from the post. The last— an internal report that showed the clerk’s office in total and only—time it happened was in 1992. disarray, with restraining orders not being served, warrants A court advisory report last year described the process for removing a clerk as onerous and likely only if the As with Probation, the individual had been convicted of a crime or official malfeasance. Any clerk re - roster of clerk-magistrates moved for cause must have his or her case heard by an advisory committee and assistant clerks made up of judges and clerks and also be given a hearing before the Com mittee includes many with strong on Professional Respon sibility for Clerks of the Court, which in turn must decide political ties. whether or not to refer the matter to the Supreme Judicial Court for action. that were cleared not being removed from the system, “The process is rarely tested and these positions (as phones not working in the office, and the number of back- noted by the Monan Report) are tantamount to a system logged cases being misreported. Despite being a no-show of lifetime tenure,” according to a report issued last year by for months on end in the Fox investigation and the orga- the Court Management Advisory Board. The Monan nizational mess in the office, Neighbors continues to hold

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filed by James M. Whalen, an assistant clerk in Springfield District Court. Budget cutbacks forced the layoff of Whalen in 2002, but he was returned to his post in 2004. Whalen sued, claiming people with less seniority were not subject to the layoff, a distinction that to him meant he was let go “for cause.” Arthur Tobin, clerk-magistrate A judge ruled Whalen should have been granted the of Quincy District Court. hearings required under the law for dismissing someone for cause. State officials agreed to a settlement in the case his job with no report of public action taken. and last year, Whalen was paid more than $190,000, more In 1997, West Roxbury District Court Clerk Michael than twice his $84,870 salary. The extra money represent- McCusker, a one-time racing commissioner appointed by ed back pay under the agreement for the time he was laid Dukakis in 1990, was shipped to Brockton District Court off, according to a court spokeswoman. after he was accused of making threatening statements to a judge and, at another time, waving a gun in his office. McCusker had charges filed against him by the commit- POWER CONNECTIONS tee on professional responsibility but retired with his pen- With their connections to the Legislature combined with sion intact in 1999 before his case was heard. regular contributions to campaign coffers, clerk-magis- The ability to remove assistant clerks is equally diffi- trates have been successful in expanding their earning cult. Short of criminal conviction, as in the 2009 case of power, increasing their autonomy, and beating back Chelsea District Court assistant clerk James M. Burke, restrictions on their authority and pocketbooks. who was fired for soliciting sexual favors from two pros- Since 2001, individual clerk-magistrates and their assis- titutes, assistant clerks can be removed only for cause. tants and their advocacy organization, the Association of Just what “cause” means became the focus of a lawsuit Magistrates and Assistant Clerks, have combined to con-

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tribute more than $140,000 to candidates around the state, many of them Beacon Hill’s most powerful members such as past and present governors, speakers and Senate presidents, judiciary committee chairmen and ways and means chairmen from both chambers. The generosity has apparently not gone unnoticed by lawmakers. Clerks’ salaries have traditionally been tied to the pay of judges, with clerk-magistrates earning 75.4 percent of a court’s chief justice’s salary, while assistant clerks made 71 percent of a clerk-magistrate’s salary. For the fiscal year 2006 budget, legislators passed a 15-percent boost in judge’s salary to nearly $131,000, meaning clerks received about an $11,000 hike. But during deliberations in November 2005 on a sup- plemental budget for FY2006, and without a recorded vote, an amendment was quietly introduced in the Senate that increased the salary for clerks to 81.6 percent of judges’ pay, meaning clerks got a total raise of $22,000 to more than $110,000. Assistant clerks received an increase to 77 percent of their bosses’ salaries, to $84,870 a year. There was no author identified in the records. A few years ago, as budget deficits began growing, a move was made to direct to the state coffers some or all of the $40 fees clerks can make from setting bail for defendants arrested after court hours at night or on weekends. The proposal went nowhere in the face of heavy lobbying from the clerks. In 2008, the Legislature was considering a bill to decouple the clerks’ salaries from judges, a move that could mean lower pay. Again, it was successfully defeated by strong lobbying and campaign contributions of at least $25,000 to lawmakers from clerks and their association that year. The clerk-magistrates are also very sensitive to any encroachment on their authority, no matter how minor. Last year, Mulligan, the chief justice of administration and finance, issued a directive that all early releases of clerk and other court employees during weather or other emergen- cies had to be cleared through his office as a way to ensure adequate staffing coverage at courthouses. Hogan, the Boston Municipal Court clerk-magistrate, serves as president of the state’s professional association of clerks. With the unanimous backing of his group, Hogan protested that only clerks had the statutory authority over the personnel in their offices. Mulligan subsequently revised his directive to say that first justices at courthouses could make decisions about employees during emergency shutdowns but only “after consultation” with clerks. One former member of the Court Management Ad - visory Board said the power of the clerks is formidable. “When we were talking with probation officials, even they expressed their envy for the power of the clerks,” says the official, who asked not to be identified.

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WHAT SHOULD BE DONE? The 2003 Monan report identified lifetime tenure and near- total autonomy as the biggest impediments to effecting change in the courts, a charge that has been made countless times by a number of panels studying court management. “There are also obstacles to good management within individual courthouses. First Justices often are armed only with moral suasion in their dealings with probation officers and clerks,” says the report. “Clerks who are appointed for life openly feud with the judges they are supposed to support.” Some judges and clerks say the animosity referred to in the Monan report has lessened in recent years, in part because the courts are now using metrics to gauge the performance of each court and the judges and clerks real- ize cooperation is key to keeping those metrics high. Both the Monan report and last year’s Court Manage - ment Advisory Board report call on the Legislature to revamp the structure of the appointed clerks’ offices, giving judges more power to hire assistants and making clerks more accountable to the judges in their courthouses. The Monan report did not specifically recommend a mandatory retirement age but pointed out the pitfalls of lifetime tenure. Last year’s advisory board report cited eliminating lifetime tenure and instituting a retirement age as one of its seven core recommendations. State Rep. Daniel Winslow, a former judge and Rom - ney administration official, has introduced a bill calling for a mandatory retirement age of 70 years old for clerks and assistant clerks, the same as the mandatory retirement age for judges. Hogan, who was appointed to his position in 1999 at the age of 34, says members of the clerks’ association would GATEWAYS TO INNOVATION be open to a mandatory retirement age—in exchange for a better pension classification. Hogan says some members Seizing the unrealized would support a mandated retirement age if they could get a Group 2 or Group 4 pension classification, the same opportunities Massachusetts has as public safety jobs such as state or local police, firefight- in its regional cities will require ers, and some sheriffs’ positions. new thinking, cross-sector The change would allow them to collect far more gen- collaboration, and long-term erous retirement benefits at a younger age. A clerk who focus. MassINC’s commitment to retired at the age of 55 with 20 years service in Group 1, support this work stems from which is what clerks now get, would receive about 30 percent of his or her salary. If the retirement was under our deep conviction that strong Group 2, they would get about 40 percent, or if Group 4, communities build the about half their salary. And they could max out their ben- middle class. Read about our efits at an earlier age in either of the higher categories. strategies for renewal in Hogan, who could retire at age 70 with 80 percent of his Massachusetts Gateway Cities at: salary no matter what category he was in, makes clear he does not support the pension-retirement age swap. “I massinc.org could name several judges who have reached the mandatory retirement age at 70 but who are in better shape than I,” Hogan says. “I think it’s a very dangerous, dangerous

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proposition for some of my colleagues to say, ‘We’ll take the lifetime appointments of appointed clerk-magistrates, retirement if we get Group 2 or Group 4.’ If you’re not Mulligan begged off. “They have certain autonomy, there’s cutting it, it’s something your family should say, ‘Hey, no question about that,”he says. “But at this point we have maybe it’s time to do something else.’” enough to take on without taking on the issue of what Mulligan, the trial court’s chief justice for administra- autonomy clerks should have.” But it appears a panel appointed by the Supreme Judicial Court to ‘At this point, we have enough investigate court hiring will look into clerk-magistrate offices. Former to take on without taking on attorney general Scott Harsh bar ger, who heads the panel, says he has the issue of what autonomy heard stories about the insular clerks and their ties to the Legis la ture. But clerks should have.’ he says he has no empirical evidence about the clerks, only anecdotes. tion and management, told CommonWealth last year that “We had the Ware report,” Harsh bar ger says of the everyone in the court system should have a term and serve SJC-commissioned study of the Probation Depart ment. at the pleasure of his or her superior. His own position, “So in effect the facts had been found for us there. One of he noted, and those of department chief justices and the the issues with the court officers and the clerks is we don’t jury commissioner all come with five-year terms. Even have that kind of detailed investigative fact-finding. Our Supreme Judicial Court justices have a mandatory retire- mission is to figure out whether we need to do that kind ment age of 70. of factual review to determine whether or not in the past Yet when asked after a February panel discussion on there have been inappropriate influences in hiring and hiring controversies in the Probation Department about promotion practices.”

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Christopher Bowman, chairman of the state Civil Service Commission.

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No easy patronage cure Civil Service stamps out political hiring, but it comes with lots of baggage.

BY BRUCE MOHL | PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARK MORELLI

the massachusetts trial Court’s policies and pro- House Speaker Robert DeLeo, who recommended cedures manual says all hiring is to be based strictly his godson and others for jobs at Probation, said back on merit. No practice or appearance of nepotism or in December that he planned to file legislation placing favoritism is allowed. Yet for almost a decade the state’s Probation and its 2,000 employees under the state’s Probation Department did just the opposite. The hir- Civil Service system. The speaker said 30 other states ing process was rigged top to bottom to employ job do it that way. candidates recommended by high-ranking politicians. Civil Service would seem to be the Holy Grail of Now Beacon Hill lawmakers, including many who anti-patronage policy. It uses tests to rank job candi- landed jobs for friends at Probation, say they are try- dates and a fairly rigid process of checks and balances ing to find a way to remove politics from the hiring to make sure any favoritism or nepotism is excluded process. Some want to ban politicians from making from the hiring process. But aside from some favor- any job recommendations. Others say recommenda- able comments from union officials, the response to tions should be allowed, but only introduced at the DeLeo’s proposal was uniformly negative. tail-end of the hiring process. One probation task force “Cut the shit about Civil Service, as if Civil Service has called for having an outside group select the pool is a reform of anything,” says former attorney general of job candidates. Another task force says hiring Scott Harshbarger, who was appointed by the Sup reme should be based on exam scores. Judicial Court to head a task force reviewing hiring

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Paul Dietl, the state’s chief human resources officer, says it’s complicated to design Civil Service tests to gauge accurately a candidate’s suitability for a job.

procedures at Probation. litigation. Civil Service is a cure that some say is worse than Bedford Police Chief James Hicks, who heads a Civil the patronage disease it was meant to eradicate. Service committee within the state chiefs of police associ- DeLeo got the message. He put off filing his legislation ation, also warns against putting Pro- bation in Civil Service. “If you think probation is a broken system, then Patronage has been a problem you’re adding it to an even more broken system by bringing it in to in the United States since Civil Service,” he says. What the critics of Civil Service George Washington assumed are worried about is not the system’s ability to root out patronage, nepo- the presidency. tism, and favorit ism. By most accounts, it does a good job of that. Their concern is with the and began quietly backing away from Civil Service. In excess baggage that accompanies it (see “Rank Injustice,” March, he switched gears and joined forces with Gov. CW, Spring ’04). Hiring under Civil Service is not always Deval Patrick and others in pushing for a heavily modified based on merit because a number of groups, particularly version of Civil Service at Probation, while leaving intact veterans, move to the head of the job queue as long as the old Civil Service system that currently covers some they get a passing grade of 70 on the test. The system is 24,000 employees in state government and thousands more also ravaged by budget cuts, subject to legislative tinkering, in municipalities. and often stalemated with endless and counterproductive David Sullivan, the general counsel in the governor’s

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“That cruel shot,” wrote histo- Boston Police Commissioner rians Charles and Mary Beard, in Ed Davis: “We don’t need a The Rise of American Civilization, more militarized police “rang through out the land, dri- department.” ving into the heads of the most hardened political henchmen the idea that there was something disgraceful in reducing the chief executive of the United States to the level of a petty job broker.” Congress responded by estab- lishing the federal Civil Service system in 1883 and a year later many states, including Massa chu - setts, followed suit. In Massachu - setts, Civil Service introduced merit-based tests to create lists of the best candidates for jobs and promotions. It also allowed em - ployees who felt they were unfairly bypassed, disciplined, or dismissed to appeal their cases to the Civil Service Commission. The system in Massachusetts helped curb patronage, but at an un sustainable cost in terms of money and red tape. As recently as the early 1980s, the state’s Human Resources Division had 500 people administering Civil Service. To day the office has just seven em - ployees. The Civil Service system office of administration and finance, says Patrick wants to used to cover most of state and municipal government, take an incremental approach on hiring practices, pilot- but today covers primarily public safety employees— ing new policies at Probation and, if those are successful, some 24,000 workers at parole, corrections, and the envi- pushing for changes elsewhere down the line. “This is, ronmental police at the state level, and police officers and frankly, a political calculation,” he says. “We want to get firefighters in 160 cities and towns. something passed. Honestly, it’s very difficult to change Adding in Probation and its 2,000 employees would the system.” represent the first significant expansion of Civil Service in some time and require the development of a new series of tests for various positions at the agency. Paul Dietl, the SPOILS SYSTEM state’s chief human resources officer, says developing tests Patronage has been a problem in the United States since to assess the skills of job applicants is a complicated process. George Washington assumed the presidency. Politicians It’s critical, he says, that the test measure accurately an naturally want to surround themselves with employees applicant’s suitability for the job. “It’s important you do who share the same philosophy. They also want to reward the right science so if you get sued, you have the science on with jobs those who helped them gain office. By the mid- your side,” he says. 1800s, those two tendencies had morphed into a spoils system that turned the federal government into a patronage dumping ground. A series of Republican presidents VETERANS DOMINATE campaigned against patronage with limited success, until The test is the centerpiece of Civil Service. It is designed to one disgruntled job seeker shot and killed President James gauge in an objective manner the applicant’s understand- Garfield in 1881. ing of the job’s duties and his or her likelihood for suc-

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Bowman, the Civil Service Commission chairman, and general counsel Angela McConney hear a case.

cess. The higher the score, presumably, the better the job was given in 2009. The 150 top-ranked applicants on candidate. But that’s not always the case in Massa chu setts. Boston’s list were all from one of the absolute-preference Several groups are given ab so lute preference in hiring groups, primarily veterans. Boston Police Com missioner under the state system. Absolute preference means that as Ed Davis says he has the utmost respect for veterans, par- long as a person in one of the special groups receives a ticularly combat veterans. But he thinks they should be passing score of 70, he or she is moved to the top of the given extra points on their test scores instead of absolute hiring list and competes based on score with others in preference. He says Boston, which is trying to implement their group. That means someone can score 100 on the community policing, needs police officers with a variety of skills and backgrounds. “We don’t need a more militarized police In dozens of cases, department,” he says. “It needs to be balanced. No one wants an army.” applicants who exceeded There are ways around the preferences. The Boston Police Department hired 55 peo- age requirements for a job ple from the list over the last two years, so they all should have come from one of the got exemptions through absolute-preference groups. But the department hired, in fact, only 13 of those job can- special legislation. didates. The 42 other hires went to people outside the preference groups under an test and still not make it near the top of the list because exception granted when an agency needs em ployees with he or she is not a member of one of the absolute-prefer- specific skills. In Boston’s case, 27 of the jobs went to ence groups. Top preference is given to Massachu - women needed for rape crisis prevention and transport setts–based sons and daughters of police or fire officials of female prisoners. Eight jobs went to job candidates who killed or injured in the line of duty, and Massachusetts- speak Cape Verdean and seven went to Haitian Creole based disabled and able-bodied veterans. speakers. Records indicate veterans tend to dominate hiring The Legislature also sometimes meddles with Civil lists, particularly in Boston. The most recent police test Service lists. A review of Civil Service bills approved over

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the last decade found dozens of instances where appli- sponsored the legislation, said it was a matter of fairness. cants who exceeded age requirements for a position were “What happened to these individuals shouldn’t have hap- granted reprieves through special legislation. pened,” he says. In 2009, the Legislature took the unusual step of moving six individuals by name to the top of the Civil Service hiring list for firefighter in Fall River. Lists typically last BOSTON VS. COMMISSION two years and then expire. The six hopefuls had risen to Davis, the Boston police commissioner, is engaged in a the top of one list, but didn’t get hired before the list fierce legal battle with the five-member Civil Service expired, which meant they would have to take the test Commission, which he claims is biased against him and again and work their way up again. The individuals other managers who are trying to weed out job applicants accused the city of deliberately delaying job offers to who shouldn’t be carrying guns. avoid hiring them. One of them alleged the hiring delay Since January 2008, 35 people have filed appeals with was retaliation against him because he previously had a the Civil Service Commission alleging they were improp- relationship with the mayor’s chief of staff, who later erly bypassed for jobs by the Boston Police Department. married then-Mayor Ed Lambert. The commission ruled against the department in 19 of Whatever the cause of the delay, Fall River officials, the cases, or 54 percent of the time. including the mayor, took up the cause of the firefighter Davis isn’t backing down. He appealed 17 of the 19 neg- candidates, winning passage of state legislation to move ative commission decisions to Superior Court. His track them automatically to the top of the next hiring list. record so far is nine wins and two losses, with six cases Patrick vetoed the measure, noting in his veto message still pending. Davis says the results speak for themselves. that the Civil Service exam was created to “avoid patron- “It’s so clear that the process is swayed in favor of the can- age and special treatment of the nature authorized in this didate,” he says. bill.” The Legislature brushed aside his concerns and Nearly every disputed case hinges on the legal issue of overrode his veto. Rep. David Sullivan of Fall River, who whether the commission went beyond its mandate to

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decide whether the police department had “reasonable justification” for bypassing a job candidate. In one appeal filed by Juan Rodrigues, who at the time was working for the Providence Police Department, the commission ruled 3-2 that the reasons the Boston Police Department gave for bypassing him—disciplinary issues while in the military and while working for Federal Express—were invalid. On appeal, Superior Court Judge Linda E. Giles ruled that the commission improperly sub- stituted its judgment for that of the Boston Police De - part ment. “When an individual, such as Rodrigues, has displayed poor impulse control or been cited for prior misconduct, it is for the appointing authority, not the commission, to decide whether to take on the risk inher-

ent in hiring that individual,” Giles wrote. Davis singles out one commissioner in particular for Diversity elevates everyone’s talents. bias. He says Commissioner Daniel Henderson, an attorney and former probation officer, has demonstrated “personal animus” toward the police department and to many of its staff. In the 35 Boston Police Department cases that came before the commission, Henderson voted against the

department 25 times, or 71 percent of the time. He voted

bingham.com Attorney Advertising © 2010 Bingham McCutchen LLP One Federal Street, Boston MA 02110 T. 617.951.8000 Prioragainst results do not guarantee a similar outcome. the department in all 19 decisions it lost as well as six of the 16 cases it won. In those six cases, Henderson was often the lone holdout. And in nine of the 10 cases where Henderson supported the department, they were unanimous decisions. Henderson, who declined comment, writes decisions that are thoughtful and well written, but it’s clear he is Pushing the boundaries skeptical of many of the reasons given by the Boston of science for kids. Police Department for bypassing job candidates. He is particularly skeptical about the department’s psychological testing. For example, David Chaves of West Roxbury was by - passed by the department because he “appeared para- lyzed by his anxiety” and presented “as a rigid, moralistic man who has difficulty acknowledging any limitations,” according to the department’s psychological analysis. But Henderson, who wrote the commission’s 3-2 decision overturning the police department’s bypass, spent 57 pages undercutting that assessment. “The preponderance of the credible evidence shows simply that the appellant did not live up to the subjective expectations of the clinical inter- viewer,” he wrote. Henderson isn’t the only one on the commission who has raised concerns about the Boston Police Department’s psychological testing. Shawn Roberts of Boston was bypassed for a patrol- man’s job because he was perceived as vulnerable to “extreme anxiety, with attendant distortion of his thinking childrenshospital.org and behavior.” Commissioner Paul Stein made clear in writing the 5-0 decision in Roberts’s favor that he thought

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the diagnosis was unfounded. “The facts of this case leave authorities win most bypass cases overall. Since the little doubt that Mr. Roberts is a ‘solidly’ normal candidate beginning of 2008, the commission has ruled against the for the position of Boston Police Officer and the commis- hiring authority only 26 percent of the time, far less than sion is skeptical that any fair and objective psychiatric the 54 percent rate in Boston. The rest of the appeals were medical evaluation reasonably could come to the opposite either denied (48 percent) or mutual agreements were conclusion,” he wrote. approved (26 percent). Davis says his success rate on appeals demonstrates that the Civil Service Com mis - Davis says Commissioner sion repeatedly oversteps its authority. He says police departments in other major cities, such Daniel Henderson has as Los Angeles, New York, and Miami, operate their own hiring systems without a Civil shown ‘personal animus’ Service commission constantly looking over their shoulder. He says Boston should be toward the Boston allowed to do the same. “We should be at a Police Department. point where we can do this ourselves,” he says.

Stein’s decision was appealed to Superior Court, and ROMNEY AND PATRICK Judge Christine M. Roach sided with the commission. “The Former Republican Gov. Mitt Romney and Democratic clinicians’ interview conclusions are not supported by Gov. Patrick couldn’t be more different politically, but substantial, reliable, psychiatric evidence,” she wrote. their views are not that far apart on Civil Service. Rom - While Davis alleges the commission is biased against ney, for example, appointed a chairman of the Civil his department, commission records indicate hiring Service Commission who was openly critical of rules such

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as the absolute veteran preference, which he said promot- salary. Public sector unions protested the backdoor move, ed mediocrity among public safety workers. Patrick and and the House and Senate rejected Patrick’s bill. The gov- his appointees haven’t been outspoken about Civil ernor resubmitted a new version of the bill, this time Service, but they’ve quietly pushed for some of the same without any Civil Service changes. changes. Like Romney, Patrick has steadily cut funding for Civil Both governors have had problems with Daniel Hend - Service. The commission’s budget is currently $450,000, erson, the commissioner viewed as too close to labor. down 11.5 percent from fiscal 2008 and 23 percent from Henderson served as a commissioner under Romney from fiscal 2001. The commission has a total of seven employees 2002 to 2006. When he applied for reappointment, Romney —five commissioners, a legal counsel, and an administra- turned him down and replaced him with Christopher tive assistant. Of the five commissioners, three receive Bowman, a member of his administration. salaries ranging from $77,000 to $96,000, while the other Henderson applied for a new opening on the commis- two work only a couple days a month. One of the part- sion in 2007 when Patrick came into office. Patrick not timers receives no salary and the other receives an $8,300 only appointed him but named him chairman. But two annual stipend. weeks later the governor changed his mind and asked John Taylor, who served as a commissioner from 2003 Hend erson to resign. Henderson refused, so Patrick until 2010, said the budget cuts are a major reason why it bumped him out of the chairman’s slot, cut his pay, and takes so long to move cases through the commission. named Bowman chairman. “That’s the biggest problem,” he says. “If they fund the Patrick administration officials wouldn’t discuss what Civil Service Com mission, it can do the job.” happened, but it’s a fair bet negative reports flowed in Bowman, the commission’s chairman, says even with about Henderson after his appointment. Patrick didn’t the budget cutbacks the agency has made significant just give up. He tried to force Henderson off the commis- progress in reducing the backlog of cases. By bringing in sion again last year by filing a government reorganization outsiders to hear some cases, Bowman says the number of bill that would have effectively eliminated Henderson’s appeals pending at the agency has dropped from 884 when

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Patrick came in to office to 186 at the end of January this police department’s operating procedures. Scores were year. He says 90 percent of cases are now disposed of tabulated and ranked, with veterans given extra points within 12 months. but not absolute preference. “I had 400 people take it,” In 2009, Patrick’s Human Resources Division proposed Cunningham said, noting job candidates came from all giving police chiefs more hiring flexibility by allowing across the country. “As long as they passed it, I could take them to choose any job candidate within a range or band anyone I want.” of scores instead of only the candidates with the top scores. The Wellesley system offers managers hiring flexi- Public sector union officials protested, and administration bility, but its weakness is that it is potentially subject to officials withdrew their proposal. the sort of political manipulation that Civil Service sys- The governor’s bid to merge probation with parole tems were created to stop. By contrast, the Civil Service system is cumbersome and time-consuming, and, with its preference set-asides, is not strictly ‘Civil service may not merit-based, but it’s effective in eliminating patronage. Many examples of the system’s suc- be perfect, but it’s the cess in blocking patronage hires are contained in the commission’s case files. only mechanism to Last year, for example, the commission ruled in favor of a candidate for a police lieutenant’s level the playing field.’ job in Quincy who alleged bias by then-Mayor William Phelan and former Police Chief Robert probably best reflects his current attitude toward Civil Crowley. Three of the mayor’s relatives were also applying Service. Parole workers are already under Civil Service, but for the job. In 2006, the commission intervened when the Patrick proposed a new system for hiring at Probation. Med ford Fire Department bypassed a candidate serving Like Civil Service, job applicants would be ranked by their in the armed forces to hire the fire chief’s son and the scores on a test and hires would be made based on the sons of two other firefighters. And in 2009 the commis- rankings. But, unlike Civil Service, veterans would only sion blocked the city of Methuen from skipping over one receive two extra points on the test instead of an absolute group of candidates for police jobs to reach a second group preference in hiring. There would also be no appeals to that included the police chief’s niece, her fiance, a police the Civil Service Commission. captain’s nephew, the relative of a school committee With reform of Civil Service elusive on Beacon Hill, member, and the nephew of a city councilor. many cities and towns are taking action on their own. “The system works. A test is a test,” says Hugh Cameron, Many mayors have pushed through home rule legislation president of the Massachusetts Coalition of Police, a exempting their hiring of police and fire chiefs from Civil statewide union representing some 3,500 police officers Service. Wellesley last year went even further, winning across the state. passage of legislation removing it from Civil Service for In many ways, the fight over Civil Service is part of the all new police hires. much larger struggle taking place between states and Terrence Cunningham, the Wellesley police chief, says municipalities and their unionized work forces. State and the police union agreed to the change in return for a two- local managers say Civil Service is no longer based on year contract extension and continuation of advanced- merit and doesn’t offer them enough hiring flexibility, education benefits under the Quinn Bill. while union leaders defend Civil Service as a system that Under Civil Service, Cunningham said that if he needed brings transparency, credibility, and fairness to govern- to hire three new officers, he would notify state officials ment hiring. and be sent the names of seven job candidates at the top Ed Kelly, president of the Professional Firefighters of of the current police list. He would have to choose the Massachusetts, backs the overall concept of Civil Service top-ranked candidates or bypass them and run the risk of and the absolute preference for veterans. Kelly, a veteran being challenged before the Civil Service Commission. himself, says a typical Boston kid hanging out on the street His biggest beefs with Civil Service were that the absolute corner can go into the military, serve his country, and come preferences yielded a narrow applicant pool dominated out with a chance at a middle class life. “That is a path to by veterans and many of the questions on the test were the American Dream,” Kelly says. “I know. I was that kid.” not relevant to Wellesley. He says he won’t let politicians take that dream away Cunningham conducted his first non-Civil Service without a fight. “Civil Service may not be perfect,” he says, hiring late last year. Wellesley conducted its own exam, “but it’s the only mechanism to level the playing field and which asked questions about the town’s bylaws and the take politics out of hiring and promotions.”

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Under its first Latino mayor, the Merrimack Valley city is struggling to get back on its feet. Between a bad economy, political infighting, and a long history of civic malaise it won’t be easy.

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Lawrence on the mat

lawrence, with an anemic tax base and the state’s highest poverty rate, is no stranger to the usual litany of urban woes facing struggling cities. But Lawrence’s problems suddenly became the state’s problems last year when city found itself teetering on the fiscal brink. With Lawrence sinking under the weight of a $24.5 million budget deficit, Beacon Hill leaders quickly crafted a rescue package that included up to $35 million in loans to keep the city afloat. Last year’s budget crisis wasn’t the first time Lawrence landed on the radar of state leaders. For years, the city government barely did its job. A state oversight board parachuted in to clean up the books in the 1990s, managing to keep order for about eight years. After the

BY GABRIELLE GURLEY PHOTOGRAPHS BY MEGHAN MOORE

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Lawrence has long been a destination for immigrants.

board disbanded, state officials loosened the reins, and development plans for it less so. Whether Lawrence’s heavy Lawrence city officials slipped back into their old bad hitters can drop the gloves long enough to agree on a habits. Departments overspent their appropriations. Top direction to confront its problems is a big question mark. directors came and went. And poorly trained municipal Finding common ground has never been easy in a city employees struggled to keep City Hall running. seen as a temporary stopover on the way to a better some- Municipal mismanagement is hardly the only thing place else. But if Lawrence is ever to snap out of its persis- Lawrence must contend with. The city is hamstrung by tent funk, the Immigrant City will have to come up with low-performing public schools, high unemployment and a workable vision for the future. poverty, and a transient population, heavy with immigrants who often lack the education skills needed to make it in today’s knowledge-based economy. State aid accounts SMOKE-STACKED DECK for more than 66 percent of the city’s revenues, making it Lawrence wasn’t established as a high-minded haven for more dependent on Beacon Hill than any community in people seeking religious or political freedoms. It was set up the state. to make money. In 1845, a group of Boston businessmen, Once a magnet for European immigrants looking for work in the city’s mills, Lawrence today draws immigrants The absence of titans of from Latin Ameri ca and the Carib bean, with smaller numbers from South east industry and a stable middle Asia. About 70 percent of the city’s 76,000 residents are Latino. In 2009, class has meant there is those numbers propelled William Lan - tigua, a former state representative, into no glue to hold together City Hall as the first elected Latino mayor in Massachu setts. civic life in Lawrence. The Dominican-born Lantigua wears his commitment to “the great city of Law rence” (a phrase the venture capitalists of the 19th century, marked this he uses often) on his sleeve. He combines a back-to-basics spot along the Merrimack River as the place to build their outlook for the city with a well-known willingness to butt textile mills. heads. And butting heads is one thing everyone agrees The tiny homestead of 100 or so people ballooned to Lawrence’s political leaders have a history of doing well. a city of nearly 10,000 in three years. The Irish, French Lantigua’s devotion to the city is obvious; his economic Canadians, Italians, and others came to work in the mills

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and live in densely-built boarding houses and tenements. Latinos were really busy trying to make life work.” The Disputes over hours and wages led to the 1912 Bread and upshot? “Who is thinking about the future, the best posi- Roses Strike, the seminal event in the city’s history, and a tive vision for Lawrence in a global economy?” he says. major milestone in the American labor union movement. “There wasn’t anybody thinking about that.” The wealthy men who made their fortunes in Lawrence did not invest in the city by founding museums or universities, or even by building mansions in exclusive pre - LATINO RISING cincts like the elites did in Boston’s Back Bay or even in That job now falls to William Lantigua. Known around nearby Lowell’s Belvidere neighborhood. Immigrants un - town as “Willy,” the mayor enters the anteroom of his wittingly followed this pattern. Since Lawrence, a city of City Hall office one February morning, greeting everyone about seven square miles, did not have many areas with with a firm “¡Saludos!” In a nod to the warm winter day, the the spacious homes and yards that newly successful work- trim, bald 56-year-old sports a light tan suit with a spring ers wanted, those that made it moved to Andover, North green shirt and diamond-patterned tie. Andover, Methuen, or elsewhere. Born in the Dominican Republic, Lantigua came to The absentee titans of industry, combined with a mobile the US in 1974 as a young man. A former community middle class, has meant there is no glue to hold the civic activist who worked on Latino voting rights and political infrastructure together. A city like Springfield, by contrast, empowerment, Lantigua ousted incumbent Democratic despite its own set of fiscal woes, retained long-time civic incumbent state Rep. Jose Santiago in 2002. (Lantigua had players like MassMutual, the financial services company, once been Santiago’s campaign manager.) Lantigua ran as and firearms maker Smith & Wesson, and is still viewed an independent in order to challenge Santiago in the as the economic engine of the Pioneer Valley. Lawrence higher-turnout November election, but later switched his plays no such role in the Merrimack Valley. affiliation to Democrat. He landed a seat on the powerful Fresh off of working with city leaders in Lowell, Bill House Ways and Means Committee, and used the perch Traynor, a Lawrence native and the former executive direc- well. Lantigua brought home tens of thousands of dollars tor of Lawrence CommunityWorks, a nonprofit commu- for local projects and organizations, according to his for- nity development organization, went looking for the peo- mer Beacon Hill colleague, Rep. David Torrisi, a North ple “in charge” when he moved back to Lawrence in the Andover Demo crat who also represents about one-third late 1990s. The bankers told the community organizer of Lawrence. that they had not been involved for years. City officials Latingua’s election as mayor two years ago represents were just happy for whatever help Traynor could offer. a coming-of-age for Dominican political power in Law - Residents were also disengaged. “The white folks, their rence. Despite their numbers, Latinos in general existed perspective was they had lost their city,” Traynor says. “The on the periphery of the city’s power structure. Domin i -

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William Lantigua, the city’s first Latino mayor, faces a tall task in getting Lawrence back on its feet. MP26256Recycle64-73_ 22-23 stats 3/24/11 6:27 PM Page 69

cans, in particular, tended to be more involved in politics remains popular and would be reelected if the election back in the Dominican Republic than they were in Law - were held today. rence. Dominicans had to gain US citizenship to vote, unlike Puerto Ricans, the city’s other major Latino group, who were already citizens. MAKING LAWRENCE WORK Prior to Lantigua’s victory over opponent David Abdoo Whether winning another term at the helm of Lawrence in the 2009 mayoral race, Latinos could not unify around a city government is more of a curse or a blessing is another single candidate. In the previous mayoral election, Lantigua matter. A responsive, well-run city government is a pre- himself threw his support to the mayor, Michael Sullivan, requisite for any credible vision for economic revitalization rather than Sullivan’s Latino opponent, Marcos Devers. in the city. And Lawrence has been so badly mismanaged Lantigua’s immigrant roots notwithstanding, he is an for so long that city officials have to prove that they can “old-school” Ameri can politician who knows that politics set a “baseline of competence,” as Traynor calls it. is “retail, everything is local,” says City Councilor Dan Rivera. As far as Lantigua is concerned, that means you first “He has been able to mobilize people when he needs to,” have to talk trash—and snow plowing. Lantigua garnered Rivera says. “People think that’s more Dominican than not, some good press this winter by catching a contractor ille- but I think that’s community organizing in the United gally dumping snow into the Merrimack, a new twist in States more than anything else.” As canny as Lantigua is, he is also his own worst enemy. Before last year’s debate Lantigua thinks dirty in the Legislature on the $35 million financial rescue plan for Lawrence, Lantigua, who streets make people feel had only weeks earlier been sworn in as mayor, stunned Beacon Hill by announcing ‘insecure,’ a version of the that he intended to keep his new job and his House seat. His colleagues howled. Gov. ‘broken windows’ theory Deval Patrick asked him to choose one or the other. At an unusual joint hearing of the that neighborhood blight House and Senate Ways and Means Com - mittees convened to examine the Lawrence increases crime. crisis, he failed to show up to testify (as mayor) or to hear other testimony (as a member of the Lawrence’s ongoing crusade against illegal dumping. committee). Lantigua defied his colleagues until they pre- Dealing with municipal nuts-and-bolts like trash and sented an offer he couldn’t refuse: Give up one of the seats snow plays to Lantigua’s strengths. According to Lantigua, or Lawrence would not get the money. Lantigua relented economic development has many tiers, but how the city and resigned from the Legis la ture. (Devers now holds the looks is at the foundation. 16th Essex House of Repre senta tives seat once held by The mayor believes dirty streets breed unease, a version Lantigua, and the two have had a long-standing, tumul- of the “broken windows” theory that neighborhood blight tuous relationship.) increases crime. “If you feel insecure, you are not going to “I am more of a community activist than a politician,” invest your money, you are not going to relocate your work- Lantigua told the Eagle-Tribune, the regional newspaper, force, you are not going to open a plant and recruit peo- last year after the debacle. Lantigua continues to make ple,” says Lantigua. He doesn’t hesitate to point fingers, Eagle-Tribune headlines in unorthodox ways more in keep- either. “If we are 70 percent Latino, 70 percent of the trash ing with his community activist past than his mayoral out there is our trash,” he says, “so I have asked the com- present. The mayor led a large group of supporters wav- munity to come out as whole and help out.” ing signs into a City Council meeting to protest accusa- As important as it may be to get the streets clean, clean- tions that Lantigua was handing out city jobs to political ing up operations in city government is what’s needed to supporters. The City Council, in response, is now consid- give Lawrence a boost that will matter over the long term. ering a ban on signs and placards at its meetings. A 2008 state review of the city’s financial management Going into the second year of his four-year term, Lan - called for a “change in the culture at city hall and a shift tigua gets mixed reviews. Some praised this winter’s snow from a loose work environment to one where clarity of clean-up in recent interviews about the mayor’s first year purpose and accountability exists.” with Siglo 21, a Spanish-language paper; others faulted Under state guidance, the mayor produced a balanced his handling of crime and the schools. But Torrisi says he budget this year for the first time in recent memory. A

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Lantigua, with US Sen. John Kerry, at announcement of $6.6 million federal grant to bolster the city’s depleted firefighting force.

review of progress reports submitted to the Executive remain in place regardless as long as the bonds are out- Office of Administration and Finance and the chairmen standing, approximately 20 more years. of the House and Senate Ways and Means Committees Lantigua gets good marks for coming to grips with the over the past year shows that Law rence moved to collect financial challenges. The “mayor has demonstrated sound back payments for overdue water and sewer bills, levy local budget practices and addressed past irresponsible bud- options taxes on meals and rooms, create a parking meter geting practices by prior administrations that helped lead plan (the city has never had metered parking), and control the city to its current crisis,” Nunes wrote in a June report. other municipal expenditures. When it comes to basic city services, businesses are Of the $35 million the state authorized Lawrence to particularly concerned about fire protection, especially in borrow to date, the city has borrowed $24 million to close a city that became synonymous with arson in the 1990s. the books on fiscal years 2008 through 2010 and used The layoff of 23 firefighters last July did little to calm those another $3.3 million to balance the 2011 budget. How - fears. As if to dramatize what was at stake, the city saw a ever, under the legislation that allows Lawrence to borrow rash of fires last summer that required neighboring fire funds, the city cannot borrow to balance the 2012 budget. departments to help out. US Sen. John Kerry and US Rep. If the outlook for most cities and towns in Massa - Niki Tsongas secured a two-year $6.6 million Homeland chusetts is tough, the prospects for a city with a very weak Security grant that addressed the problem, at least tem- tax base are worse. To balance Lawrence’s fiscal 2012 bud- porarily, allowing the city to rehire or recruit 38 firefight- get, the city will have to rely on “a combination of fee in - ers; whether the grant program survives the current creases, new revenue initiatives, and budget reductions,” Washington budget climate is difficult to know. according to the state fiscal overseer, Robert Nunes, a A city chasing a mix of federal, state, and private dol- deputy commissioner in the Department of Revenue. Then lars to keep afloat requires professional management. there is the long road ahead to repay the borrowed funds. Beginning in 2000, however, Lawrence went through five Nunes can call for a control board if the city fails to bal- finance directors and four comptrollers in seven years. As ance its budget, and some degree of state oversight will of mid March, the city had vacancies for a treasurer/tax

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collector and another budget and finance director. from a white Anglo administration, dominated by Italians, Lantigua is limited in his ability to bring wholesale Irish, and French Canadians, and put in the Latinos. change to city government by the city charter, which gives Nothing much is going to happen,” he says. the City Council a role in all top-level hiring and firing decisions. Although some key City Hall employees were let go when he took office, Lantigua says he did not have GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS the “luxury of saying, ‘everybody’s out.’” In spite of the downturn, there is a modest amount of Some people think a change in the city charter is need- development underway. To bring jobs to the city, Lantigua ed, not to strengthen the mayor’s hand, but to put a city has personally recruited new businesses like J.S.B. Indust - manager in the role of the top administrator. “Politicians ries, a baked goods producer, to open facilities or encour- get elected based on many things, but not on their ability aged others to stay. Last year, Northern Essex Community to run the human resources, contracting, budgeting, and College opened a new campus facility in the Riverwalk general management of a multi-million dollar organiza- complex, owned and operated by local commercial real tion,” says former senator Susan Tucker, a North Andover estate developer Sal Lupoli, and the school plans to open Democrat whose district included Lawrence. “I came to a $27 million allied health and technology center in a the conclusion that Lawrence needed a professional city vacant mall downtown. manager many years before Mayor Lantigua was elected, The $75 million Union Crossing project, a partnership so this is not a commentary on his administration.” of Lawrence CommunityWorks and a private develop- Lawrence city government will remain weak unless the ment team, aims to create a new working family-oriented city makes reforms starting with the city charter so that neighborhood in the mill district. The first phase of con- new hires can be held accountable, according to Ramón struction is scheduled for completion later this year. Law - Borges-Mendéz, a Clark University professor of commu- rence is also sprucing up parks and recreational facilities nity development and planning who has studied the city through state-funded Gateway City initiatives like a parks for nearly 30 years. “You can switch the administration program that funneled $2.6 million to the city for river-

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Mills and markets in Lawrence.

front pathways. not express your opinions about the political process,” Long ignored by city officials, the outlook for small says Lantigua. “We raise our voices a little bit higher businesses like the bodegas and beauty salons, whose own- because at one time we were not allowed to do that.” The ers constitute part of a tiny and slowly growing Latino political climate is bitter even by the Bay State’s rough and middle class, is less clear. City officials would like to revive tumble standards. Rivera says Lawrence’s “cantankerous a dormant small business loan program. A small business political situation” is one of the reasons why city leaders center that aides local entrepreneurs would go a long way have a difficult time recruiting and retaining professional to integrating those businesses into the city’s economy, government officials. according to Nelson Butten, of Lawrence Community - Nearly a year and a half after Lantigua’s election, ten- Works. sions linger between some Latinos and some white resi- “Bill Gates is not going to come in and say, ‘We are going dents who are not fully accepting of the new political to put a Microsoft here,’” says Borges-Mendéz, the Clark order. Majorities of voters in the two south Lawrence dis- University professor. He argues that cities like Lawrence, tricts where many white voters live went for Lantigua’s Holyoke, and New Bedford require multiple strategies, such white opponent. “Lantigua needs to bridge some divides as small business training, new job creation incentives, with some of the Anglo community,” says Torrisi, the and more effective state workforce development pro- local state rep. “This is the first Latino mayor and some grams that go beyond getting workers any old type of job. people are having a tough time with that.” Lantigua and his chief economic development direc- Lantigua is “personable, but he’s a proud guy, sometimes tor, Patrick Blanchette, are vague on how all these pieces too proud,” says Rivera. “Like every first-generation ethnic sync up. Bringing together key players in the business leader, he’s very sensitive to what people do and say about com munity to talk about future challenges is “something the community he comes from.” we’ve been thinking about,” says Lantigua. But he shows City Councilor Marc Laplante, a frequent Lantigua little interest in a more sweeping approach that would try adversary, says Lawrence is held back by the political in - to get Lawrence’s business leaders all on the same page. “I fighting that goes on. “We need to get past the petty pol- believe that the one-on-one approach, going [to the busi- itics that divides our city and really find out what it is that ness] and sitting down, and having that face-to-face con- brings us together,” says Laplante. “If we can’t even accom- versation is much more productive than an open forum,” plish that…how do we expect to accomplish anything he says. else?” If conflicts between the administration and city coun- cilors are par for the course in many cities, a mayor taking FEUD FIGHTS on his city’s own police force is not. But that was the focus Ask about politics in Lawrence and words like “contentious” of one of Lantigua’s most recent dust-ups. and “vicious” tumble out. That’s not surprising in a com- Lawrence ranks among the top 10 cities in the state for munity where immigrants have always competed for limited violent crime. Its image as a dangerous urban wasteland, resources. “Many of us come from places where you could though, is a misconception, say some residents. “It’s not

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“It’s a real tragedy.” Lantigua admits he does not “speak to the paper much,” citing issues that many politicians complain about: inaccurate quotes, insufficient background details on policy stories, and unfair reporting. “We know that the people we represent could care less about what’s printed now,” he says. At least what’s printed in the establishment English- language press. Ethnic media in Lawrence now carry a lot of clout. “The reality the mainstream media needs to face is they don’t influence this mayor,” says Torrisi. “What influences this mayor is the local Latino media, the radio, and some of the local Latino newspapers.” Torrisi argues that some of the criticism of Lantigua “is not based in reality,” but he adds that the mayor “doesn’t do himself any favors, either, when he doesn’t talk to the Eagle-Tribune.” Meanwhile, relations between the city and the business like criminals are just walking among us, just destroying community it desperately needs to woo are similarly in the city,” says Ana Luna, ex ecutive director of Arlington need of a jump-start. The commercial developers and oth- Neigh bor hood Trabajando, a nonprofit community ers have long gone their own ways without waiting for development group. signals of interest from city leaders. However, the city has been forced to lay off more than Lawrence was originally designed to extract labor out 50 police officers since 2009 and eliminate the auto theft of its inhabitants without doing much more than giving and fraud unit that went a long way toward curbing those them a roof over their heads. That legacy seems to still be crimes. On the heels of those cuts, coupled with the eco- in the air, and it exasperates potential coalition-builders. nomic recession, it may not be altogether surprising that “I’d like to go to the table of the people that run the city from last July to January felonies like auto theft or aggra- of Lawrence and become a partner and work with them,” vated assault were up sharply compared to same period in says David Hartleb, the Northern Essex Community College president, who is stepping down in June. “But there’s no table. It ‘I’d like to go to the table of never has existed. People attack each other over issues rather than sit down the people that run Lawrence to discuss them and rather than reason about them.” and become a partner with There’s a desperate urgency to fill the city’s leadership void. What Law - them, but there is no table. rence needs most is a convener, someone or some group with the standing It never has existed.’ or the clout to get the major players to the table for a series of adult con- 2009. But to Lantigua, the big jump in crime was due to versations on the many challenges facing the city. lax policing. In March, he went on Spanish-language tele- Rebranding Lawrence hinges not only on clean streets vision to blast the police force over the increase in auto and balanced budgets, but also on improving public safety, thefts. “A lot” of officers, he said, “intimidate the city and its public schools, and promoting cultural assets, including don’t do their jobs.” Police Chief John Romero quickly its significant labor history. For Lawrence to thrive, the city took exception, telling the Eagle-Tribune that the mayor’s will have to knit a coherent economic vision to a stronger comments were “incorrect and inaccurate.” civic fabric. Plenty of people don’t care much about what Lantigua’s feuding extends into the media world, where happens in Lawrence, but Hartleb insists that they should. he is barely speaking to reporters from the Eagle-Tribune. “Merrimack Valley is going to rise or fall on Lawrence, “One of the big issues here is that our mayor has been at because it’s the poorest and most challenged city,” he says. war with the paper from before the beginning of time,” “It’s going to drag us all down if we don’t work together says Traynor, the Lawrence CommunityWorks founder. to bring it up.”

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conversation

History lessons Jill Lepore says the Tea Party movement has embraced an approach to American history that is more rooted in religious fundamentalism than in any serious examination of the past.

jill lepore, of all people, ought to be celebrating the fascination Americans have with the country’s Revolutionary War era. After all, Lepore specializes in early American history at Harvard, where she has been on the faculty since 2003. Lepore is heartened by interest in the nation’s early history. But she is less taken with the ways the past gets interpreted and put to use in contemporary political battles Americans have always tried to appropriate the ideas and events from the country’s founding in

photographs by frank curran

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order to advance various causes of the day, she says. It was happening in the late 1700s, when the Revo lu - tion’s muskets had barely been stilled, and has been part of American political culture ever since. In the 1970s, anti-busing protesters in Boston invoked the Founding Fathers when they decried court-ordered school desegregation as a new “tyranny dressed in judicial robes.” And appeals to various touchstones of America’s founding were made by anti-war protesters during the Vietnam era, crusaders for women’s rights, and civil rights activists led by Martin Luther King, who said “the Boston Tea Party was nothing but a massive act of civil disobedience.” But Lepore says today’s Tea Party movement, which she explores in her latest book, The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle over American History, has taken popular use of Ameri can history to new, and much more troubling, level. With its references to founders who are said to be rolling in their graves, study sessions that treat the Con st i - tution like Holy Scripture, and reverential treatment of Revolutionary-era leaders whose views are stripped of all ambiguity or contradiction, the Tea Party movement, says Lepore, takes an approach to history that has more in common with religious zealotry than any sort of reasoned scholarship that examines the past. “That is not history,” she writes. “It’s not civil religion, the faith in democracy that binds Americans together. It’s not originalism or even constitutional- ism. That’s fundamentalism.” Some of the blame for today’s treatment of history lies with historians themselves, Lepore says. Over the past 40 years, academic historians have largely retreated from the public arena, no longer offering sweeping narratives that try to tell the entire story of the than her new book, which sprang from a New Yorker piece country’s past and present. Filling that vacuum, she says, she wrote last May. In it, Lepore drops in on meetings of the have been pundits-as-historians and various political Boston-area Tea Party and heads to the Boston Common movements that have laid claim to the role of national for last spring’s big Tea Party rally with Sarah Palin. What story-tellers. The freefall of US newspaper circulation has she sees and hears is interwoven with the history that the also played an important role, Lepore says, as fewer Tea Partiers claim as their inspiration. Americans share a common reading and understanding In an interview, Lepore is quick to say that she enjoyed of current events. the local Tea Partiers and the time she spent with them, While academic historians have been less engaged in describing their political views as not that different from public life, Lepore, who is also a staff writer for The New those of the Republican family in which she was raised in Yorker, cuts against that grain. A fluid writer who ambles Spencer, 10 miles west of Worcester. But she’s consider- comfortably out of the research stacks and into the report- ably less charitable on paper in describing the version of ing trenches, Lepore has written pieces for the magazine American history that the broader movement began ped- about the Tea Party, the Constitution, and other matters dling when the Tea Party exploded on the scene in 2009. It connected to early American history, but has also ranged “wasn’t just kooky history; it was antihistory,” she writes. across topics as varied as parenting and the politics and Rather than trying to understand history in its time culture of death in America (the topic of her next book). and place, she says, the Tea Party has collapsed the idea of Nothing may capture better the ease with which she the passage of time, treating the Revolutionary era lead- moves between mining the past and observing the present ers as if they are here with us today—or we are somehow

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living in their time. Lepore says the yearning of today’s Tea about New York City in 1741, where 13 black men were Partiers for a straightforward story of an idyllic American burned at the stake and 17 more hanged on charges that past, as the country grapples with complex problems, is they were conspiring to burn the city down, to liberate the understandable, but ultimately misguided. She traces its slaves. Every time I spoke about the book in public, peo- roots to a similar quest that emerged at the time of the ple were genuinely surprised, and deeply troubled. “You national Bicentennial, when the social upheaval of the mean, there was slavery in New York?” In 1741, one in five 1960s and 70s was exposing just how messy and compli- New Yorkers was a slave. It’s not surprising that people cated our history was. don’t know this history. Consider New England. By the Lepore wants us to consider and study the country’s end of the Revolution, slavery had been abolished in all of early history, not raise it on an altar. “The founders were New England but, as a number of scholars have demon- not prophets,” she writes. “Nor did they hope to be wor- strated, New Englanders then set about erasing slavery shipped. They believed that to defer without examination from their memories, as if it had never been a part of this to what your forefathers believed is to become a slave to place’s past. Academic historians have been trying, for the the tyranny of the past.” last half century, to write an integrated history of the I sat down with Lepore in her office at Harvard. What United States, a history both black and white, a history follows is an edited transcript of our conversation. that weaves together political history and social history, — MICHAEL JONAS the history of presidents and the history of slavery. The story of the Revolution told by the far right today is, cw: You’re an academic scholar of early American histo- among other things, a rejection of that scholarship. ry. What inspired you to write a book looking at the most current wave in American politics? Voter turnout in 2008 lepore: By period, I study early American history, but, was the highest since thematically, I study race, violence, and the writing of history. My first book, The Name of War, was about King 1968. That is not a Philip’s War, in 1675 and 1676, a war that, while devastat- ing—the Indians were trying to kick the colonists out of failure of democracy or, New England, and destroyed more than half the existing by any measure, English settlements—and abundantly chronicled at the time, has been almost entirely forgotten today. Never the - a lack of representation. less, it was memorialized, politically, at key moments in the 18th and 19th centuries. I’ve always been interested in cw: Looking at the current Tea Party movement, one how, why, and when wars are remembered and forgotten. question that jumps out is, how did the cry of “no taxation The Tea Party’s rhetorical use of the Revolution is not without representation” turn into a cry of “no taxation” unlike, say, the invocation of King Philip’s War by New or “much less taxation.” That wasn’t exactly what was England ministers at the war’s centennial, in 1775 and going on. 1776, to argue for ousting the British. They said, in effect, “We are the Indians now.” lepore: On the one hand, it’s very easy to look at the Tea Party and say, OK, taxation without representation— cw: Your book’s title, it becomes clear in reading the text, that’s just a patently false analogy. We are looking at a is a double entendre—or maybe it’s even a triple entendre: democratically elected Congress and a democratically elect- It’s obviously a reference to the famous battle call from ed president, during an age of universal suffrage. Voter Bunker Hill. You write that it’s not clear such a cry was turnout in 2008 was the highest since 1968. That is simply actually uttered, which seems to make a point about how not a failure of democracy or, by any conceivable measure, some things that take on legendary status in history may a lack of representation. And of course, during the 2010 be mythic. But you also use it at one point to capture the mid-term Congressional elections, many candidates sup- idea that the Tea Party movement yearns for a particular ported by the Tea Party were brought into office. That is version of American history that is almost literally white- not a failure of democracy, either: disgruntled voters washed, a story in which only white people figure. brought in new legislators, starting here in Massachusetts with Scott Brown. So the big story is that our political sys- lepore: Yes, the mythic. I also wanted to point out, in tem allows people who are discontent to go to the polls, particular, that the story of slavery in the North has been and make a difference. The big story is just, patently, not largely forgotten. My last book, New York Burning, was a lack of representation. On the other hand, it’s almost

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too easy to point out that it’s a false analogy. Because it’s the 18th century, different ideas were expressed and debat- a very powerful image for people, and the Revolution itself, ed; even individual people had different ideas over the including the dumping of the tea, contains all kinds of course of their own lives. These people were living in an elements that I think work like kind of civic folklore, that age of revolution, the most exciting political ferment in a matter a lot to people, and that are important. They’re millennium, and having profound political arguments important enough that they’re worth debating and argu- about the relationship between people and their rulers. ing over.

cw: You write that this whole period during the Revo lu - They argued, they tionary era contains “an ocean of ideas; you can fish almost changed their minds anything out of it.” Is that a danger in terms of our relationship with history? all the time. They weren’t writing lepore: Yes and no. If you want to Google something, the Founding Fathers’ papers are online. You can search for, slogans for us to put on say, “arms,” and you can very easily find some quote to support your point of view. But what you have found is, bumper stickers. by definition, something you have taken out of context; that is how your search, in fact, worked: you took some- People thought hard; they thought deeply; they argued thing out of context. To Google is, fundamentally, to yank with one another; they changed their minds all the time. something out of context. So, yes, there is an ocean of ideas, They weren’t writing slogans for us to put on bumper and always has been, but going fishing for them hasn’t stickers. always been so easy as it is just now. And, it’s not only that there’s an ocean of ideas, it’s that, over the course of, say, cw: And what would you say history is for?

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blasphemy, well, that’s not history; that’s fundamentalism.

cw: You use the term fundamentalism a lot in de - scribing the Tea Party movement. What do you see as the connection there?

lepore: If you listen to the rhetoric long enough— “what is wrong with America today?”—there’s this constant sense of panic that we are in an unprece- dented state of decline and disaster. When you listen to the rhetoric of people on the far right—and I wouldn’t say only the Tea Party, or even that most people who support the Tea Party subscribe to this —you hear that the problem is that we have forsak- en our Founding Fathers, our ancient patriarchs: they left words for us that were divinely inspired and that were brought down to us by God; we have for- saken them and they are judging us, and they will come back to haunt us. That’s not history. That’s not folklore. That is a way of thinking about the relationship between the past and the present that comes out of certain varieties of religion.

cw: At one point you quote Glenn Beck saying, “reading the Founders is like reading the Bible.” I guess that’s pretty explicit in drawing the connection.

lepore: Lately, the Tea Party has made a big shift from all the rhetoric of “we need a new revolution” to “we need to read the Constitution.” And in that move, the connection with Biblical reading is often made very explicit. In fact, people read the Constitution now in Bible study groups. Reading the Constitution is, of course, a good idea. But I don’t lepore: I think history is for finding ourselves in the lives think the Constitution was meant to be read devotionally. of others and studying the human condition, and learn- I don’t actually think the answers to our problems are ing not only about universals but more about particular- found in those 4,400 words nor were they meant to be ities—how different we are from people from different found in those 4,400 words. times and places. What we have in common with people who lived long ago matters, but so does what we don’t. cw: The Constitution was read on the floor of the House when Congress convened in January. What did you make cw: People resist that, though. They want to locate in this of that? period of history in particular some timeless moments or truths. lepore: The rhetoric surrounding that act of political theater was that it marked a return to the nation’s found- lepore: Sure, and there’s more than one way to think ing principles. Interestingly, though, of course, the Con - about the past. We draw inspiration from the past and we sti t u tion had never before been read on the floor of look to the past for lessons and we look to the past for Congress. Reading the Constitution on the floor of Con - models. Those are all fine things to do. But to make a gress was a break with tradition, a novelty. And, of course, political argument based on the claim that certain docu- they didn’t “read the Constitution”; they read a redacted ments constitute a kind of revealed religion, and to insist and amended Constitution, having removed, most notably, that to argue against them, or even to question them is everything about slavery, presumably because they under-

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stood that the Constitution drafted in 1787 doesn’t actu- Tea Party seemed to offer a balm: “We can have our story ally explain our lives today. What explains our lives today of America, and it’s going to be a whole story, and it’s are all the changes that have happened since 1787. The going to be good story and it’s going to be inspiring and Constitution is not a document, Felix Frankfurter once uplifting.” As if the 60s and 70s never happened. And that’s wrote, it’s a stream of history. what’s not okay about it. But I think the earnestness and the sincerity of wanting that—that’s not to be trifled with, cw: You talk a lot about this line of connection from and I think it is for many people a real and kind of heart- today’s Tea Party movement to events in the 1970s around breaking sentiment. the time of the Bicentennial. What’s the connection there, or why is it that today’s Tea Party is really following in cw: The 1970s were rich in invocations of the Tea Party that tradition in some ways? and the Revolution: anti-busing activists here in Boston laid claim to this legacy as did antiwar activists who staged lepore: I don’t think it’s fair when people accuse the Tea a reenactment at Lexington and Concord, a huge protest Party of shameless hucksterism in making political argu- that our senior senator [John Kerry] himself was involved ments by reviving stories from American history, as if this in and got arrested at. You don’t seem too taken with the has never been done before, as if this always comes from efforts on either side. the right. That’s just not true. It’s done by the left all the time, too. And it was certainly done by the left more than lepore: I’m a historian, so it’s not surprising that when by the right in the 1960s and in the 1970s during the people use history in these ways, it’s not going to thrill me. Bicentennial of the American Revolution. Think about the political violence and the political disillusion, the dis- cw: But there’s this idea that all sorts of debates and argu- enchantment of those years. Think about the Civil Rights ments involve metaphor or a likening of two things, and Movement, Vietnam, Watergate, Kent State, the US inva- history is like this too: “This is like that,” or “this is the same sion of Cambodia, the assassinations. And then think as that.” It seems like a natural way to frame arguments is to draw on things and make reference to things that are The Tea Party seemed to familiar to people. offer a balm: ‘We can have lepore: I guess. And there’s insight to be had there. But I think, finally, it’s shallow insight. I would say, as a scholar, our story of America, and as a teacher, where is that going to get you? That’s a curios- ity; that’s not an analysis. When the swine flu panic hit in it’s going to be a whole 2008, the job of most newspaper reporters or magazine story and a good story.’ reporters or television reporters was to say, let’s find something like this that has happened before. Let’s find a prece- dent. And so in that instance, everybody focused on the about those things taking place at a time when Americans influenza epidemic of 1918, which, as you know, was dev- were trying to tell a story about the country’s origins. It’s astating, an international epidemic of massive propor- not surprising that the left used that story to critique what tions, at a time when medical care was fundamentally dif- was going on in the United States at that moment. ferent than it was in 2008. You had all these people on radio shows and on TV, nattering on about flu in 1918. As cw: But then there was in the 1970s a right-wing reaction a historian, you’re just thinking, of what possible use is to these left-wing critiques, which you say the Tea Party is this analogy? What’s interesting about 1918 and 2008 are the most recent manifestation of. the differences, not the similarities. If I had a student come to me and say, I want to write a paper about how the 2008 lepore: I have tried to understand what I think is earnest swine flu was just like influenza in 1918, I would say, and sincere and somewhat moving about what draws a “Come again?” lot of people into the Tea Party. A generation of people— generally it’s older Americans—who were coming of age cw: But take the current debates around education reform, in the 60s and 70s, at a time when the story of the nation’s for example, and the efforts to close the achievement gap. origins, a kind of consensus American history, was falling A common refrain is that this is “the civil rights issue of apart, and being challenged by activists and also by histo- our time.” Yet trying to figure out a way to provide high rians. And I think that was, for many of those people, an quality urban education for poor kids is fundamentally incredible loss, a loss that left them mourning, and the different from the Civil Rights Movement.

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lepore: I’d have to look at it, but I might say that is a legitimate argument, that’s actually not a false analogy, not a leap between now and then. That’s actually an origins story. That’s seeing this struggle as a piece of a con- tinuum that we can trace all the way back to the cases in the 1850s, when black Bostonians petitioned the Massa chu setts Legislature for equal education and were denied. We want to see this as part of that, that it has its origins in this place. So if we want to think about this educational moment in that context, I think that’s about marking continuity, it’s not actually about specious com- parison. BECOME A MASSINC SPONSOR: cw: But you could imagine somebody saying, “If Martin Luther King Jr. were here, he’d be championing charter ADVERTISE IN schools.” You can see it working its way into very specific COMMONWEALTH arguments. As with the Tea Party, they’re efforts to seize the moral high ground, right? Take advantage of this unique opportunity to reach over 11,000 lepore: Sure. People do that. That’s how arguments are made, that’s a rhetorical move. I don’t find it convincing opinion leaders each quarter! but so what? I do think, though, that the Tea Party tried to make a much bolder intervention in how we think about For more information call 617.742.6800 who we are as a people than to say something about Martin x113 or go to www.massinc.org Luther King and education. That’s not a one-off.

cw: You wrote about the historian Richard Hofstadter, who died in 1970, that he was “one of the last university professors of American history to reach readers outside of the academy with sweeping interpretations both of the CLARK UNIVERSITY past and of his own time.” You say the absence of historians in the period since then who played that kind of role has been an important factor in American life.

lepore: For one thing, pundits have replaced scholars as “Beware of false political commentators. For another, academic historians, American historians, have been engaged in a different kind knowledge; of project, which is telling the stories of smaller groups of it ismore people and conflicts between groups. Finally, scholars no longer often write the way Hofstadter did, about the near- dangerous than present, or in the way that he did. There are many forces we could identify for that change. Much excellent histor- ignorance.” ical work has been done since 1970. But I think a kind of –George Bernard Shaw cultural space was created by the retreat of academics from public debate, and into that space has come Glenn Beck, America’s history professor. TRANSFORMING cw: You say this started to take place as early as the mid- RESEARCH 70s. You wrote, “Historians mocked the Bicentennial as INTO REALITY schlock but didn’t offer an answer, a story to a country that needed one. That left plenty of room for plenty of Jim Gomes, Director (508) 421-3872 other people to get into the history business.” So the role clarku.edu/mosakowskiinstitute of history-telling abhors a vacuum?

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lepore: Americans love history. There’s the History Chan- ibly welcoming and generous with their time, and very nel. Ancestry-dot-com is a huge industry. Professional open with me. And I liked them to a person. I think a genealogy, hiring someone to research your family, is big lot of them are basically Republicans who have always business. Where do we come from and who are we as a been a minority in this state and who were excited about people? Those are still good questions, even if historians a chance to be active politically in an organization that don’t want to answer them. might actually be effective—and that was effective, with the Scott Brown victory. We really disagreed about poli- cw: So what does that leave us with? Do you see a danger tics, but that’s like every Thanksgiving dinner I have ever in the way history gets practiced out there? been to. I find it very comfortable to sit around a table and disagree with people about politics. That’s about the lepore: Not danger. Promise. Eric Foner, who was actu- best thing that any of us could do. The problem is that ally a Hofstadter student, wrote this great book, The Story people sit in their living rooms and scream at the TV and of Freedom, an attempt to tell the story of America as a disagree about politics with people who aren’t even in the story about all of us, as a people. People are still writing room. those books. cw: But is there something that disturbs you about their cw: What was it like for you to spend time with the Tea claim on history? People can say, “We don’t want a further Party people? On the one hand, you say you have a lot of government role in health care”—that’s a position one sympathy for their wish to find a connection to history or can take. But the idea that this is contrary to what this see a unitary sort of national purpose that binds us country is about…. together. But it also pretty clear you aren’t close to being on the same page politically. lepore: There’s nothing about this particular group of people that disturbs me. These are ordinary citizens get- lepore: They were all smart people. They were all incred- ting involved in politics. There is a piece of it—some guy

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from ‘BUR told me he was doing a story and people from cw: Yes, I see. So there’s a lot about the current times that the Tea Party were harassing Freedom Trail interpreters is worrisome. about their interpretation of the Freedom Trail – that bothers me. But that’s not the people I met. lepore: I make the argument in the book that the rise of the Tea Party and the death of the newspaper are causal- cw: We’re in such an era of information overload with so ly related. American democracy and the American news- much available online. But it doesn’t always seem partic- paper were born together, and the newspaper is now ularly helpful or that it brings a more reasoned reckoning dead, and it’s thrown our politics into a sort of disequi- with history. Are you more hopeful or pessimistic going librium, and we won’t get past that for a while. forward about how we’ll treat our history and bring it into current debates and discussions? Now I’m asking you to cw: Is it just newspapers? Isn’t it also the death of the net- be a forecaster. work newscast? We used to all sit down and get a shared sense of what’s going on in the world, whether in the lepore: Historians are not supposed to prophesy. I think newspaper or on TV. it’s great that Americans are interested in the past, and the one thing that I most liked about doing book events at lepore: Right. It’s not just newspapers. It’s a lot of things, town halls was, when people from the Tea Party came, we including a shared sense of the past. Losing that consen- would have a really good conversation, because what we sus was good and bad. American history, as it was written share is we’re all really interested in the Revolution. I could during the Cold War, served as an argument against total- talk about the Revolution for hours. What they knew did itarianism. It was good to have a story about the origins not make a lot of sense to me, but they were really eager of democracy; it’s too bad it wasn’t better history. Better to talk about it. And that seemed sort of promising. I’m history has since been written, much better history, but it stretching to find something promising, though, you will doesn’t make as good a story. notice.

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argument and counterpoint

More efficient legal services for the poor by jay gonzalez

thanks to a relatively strong economic recovery free legal services to indigent criminal defendants, and our prudent fiscal management during the and Gov. Patrick is committed to ensuring that recession, Massachusetts is in a much better finan- quality legal services are provided to those legally cial position than most other states. Even so, we will entitled to them. The governor is also committed, be facing our most challenging budget in the upcom- however, to providing those quality legal services ing fiscal year. While tax revenues are expected to in the most cost-effective manner as possible. Just grow as the economy continues to recover, the un- as state government has an obligation to provide precedented drop in tax revenues during the reces- quality legal services to indigent criminal defen- sion created a hole that will take us years to climb dants, it also has an obligation to be a good stew- out of. The expected tax revenue growth will also ard of the taxpayers’ money and to stretch every make up for only half of the federal stimulus funds taxpayer dollar as far as possible to provide all of that will no longer be available next fiscal year. As the programs and services people expect and a result, the state budget next year will need to be deserve from their government. $570 million less than this year’s budget, the The Committee for Public Counsel Services largest cut in year to year spending in 20 years. (CPCS) is the state agency that currently oversees In the face of this new fiscal reality, Gov. Deval the provision of free legal counsel to indigent crim- Patrick’s fiscal year 2012 budget proposal builds inal defendants and to others in certain limited on the many reforms enacted during his first term civil cases. In this fiscal year, the total cost for this with many new proposals to make government agency is projected to be $207 million—a $21 more effective and efficient. These proposals are million dollar increase since fiscal year 2007 and necessary to preserve critical investments in our a $100 million increase since 2003. Of the $207 future, including historic levels of funding for our million expected to be spent this year, CPCS is schools and for efforts to close the achievement expected to spend over $160 million on bills from gap among our students; investments in job cre- approximately 3,000 contract lawyers, called pri- ation and economic growth; and investments in vate bar advocates, who are given 90 percent of programs that address youth and urban violence. the cases and bill the state at an hourly rate. The These reform initiatives are also necessary to mit- remaining 10 percent of the cases are handled by igate the extent to which we need to eliminate or full-time staff attorneys employed by CPCS. reduce critical programs and services. We cannot The agency as currently operated is one of the most avoid deep cuts that will have real impacts on expensive for the provision of public defender people across the Common wealth. We can and we services in the country. Not only can we no longer must, however, take steps to change the way gov- sustain the rate of growth in costs that we have seen ernment does business to preserve as many criti- in CPCS over the last few years, we need to reduce cal programs and services as possible. costs in order to preserve as many other critical Toward this end, one of the many reforms Gov. state services as possible. Patrick has proposed is to change the way the The governor’s reform proposal would do just state provides legal services for criminal defen- that, saving taxpayers $60 million a year once fully dants who cannot afford attorneys on their own. implemented while improving accountability and The state is constitutionally required to provide preserving quality legal services for those entitled to

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argument & counterpoint

them. There are three major elements to his reform proposal. out of concern for the quality of services provided by the First, the governor proposes to use state-hired public 3,000 private bar advocates and does not reflect a lack of defenders to handle the current caseload instead of pay- appreciation for their work. It is also important to note, ing private lawyers hourly rates. Based on conservative however, that the purpose of the program is not to pro- estimates, the state would need to hire about 1,000 new vide private bar advocates with work. It is to provide indi- lawyers to take on the caseload currently handled by the gent criminal defendants with quality legal representa- private bar advocates. This assumes that each public tion as cost-effectively as possible. We are the only state in defender would have annual caseloads of only 200 cases per year, well below the 275 cases per year determined to be appropriate by the Paying by the hour American Bar Association, the US Depart ment provides wrong incentive. of Justice, and the National Legal Aid Defenders Association. This conservative caseload assumption was the country that contracts out 90 percent of its cases to made in order to ensure that the public defenders will not private lawyers. Half of the 3,000 private bar advocates be overburdened and will be able to provide good quali- bill the state more in a year than the average annual salary ty legal services. Even with this conservative assumption of our full-time public defenders. A system that pays pri- about the number of new lawyers that would be needed, vate bar advocates by the number of hours they work as well as conservative assumptions about all of the addi- provides an incentive to take longer to resolve cases, not tional costs that would be incurred, including support necessarily to achieve a better result. Based on our con- staff, health insurance, unemployment insurance, pension servative analysis, we can provide good quality legal ser- costs, additional rent, supplies, and other overhead, this vices to indigent criminal defendants with a state-staffed proposal to move to a state-staffed public defender sys- public defender system much more cost-effectively than tem would result in tens of millions of dollars in savings. we can through the current system that relies heavily on It is important to note that this proposal is not made private bar advocates. Our proposal does, however, allow

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argument & counterpoint

for the use of private bar advocates when necessary due to rigorous process for ensuring that those receiving free conflicts of interest or other extraordinary circumstances. legal services are in fact entitled to free legal services. Cur - Second, the governor’s proposal would replace CPCS rently, the Probation Department determines eligibility with a new, independent executive branch agency called based on quick interviews with applicants and without the Department of Public Counsel Services. CPCS is a cross-checking against any income records. The governor’s judicial branch agency governed by a 15-member board proposal would shift indigency verification to the new of lawyers appointed by the chief justice of the Supreme Department of Public Counsel Services and require that Judicial Court. Only six states in the nation provide pub- systems currently used to verify income levels of applicants lic defender services exclusively within and under the for other state programs against Department of Revenue control of the judicial branch. In Massachusetts, mem- tax data be used to verify income-eligibility for public de - bers of the CPCS board who govern the agency on behalf fender services as well. By tightening the eligibility deter- of the public are permitted to take cases from and be paid mination process, the department’s caseload will de crease by the agency. Last year, four members of the board billed and the fee collections from people deemed “able to con- CPCS over $250,000 in the aggregate for the cases they tribute” to the cost of their counsel will increase. This is took as court appointed private attorneys. While this prac- not about changing the income-eligibility standards; it is tice is not prohibited under current law and there is no simply about doing a better job making sure those receiv- charge that any of these board members made decisions ing free legal services are in fact entitled to them. that were contrary to the public interest, this governance Our new fiscal reality demands that we change the structure raises the potential for conflicts of interest. By way government does business to stretch every taxpayer making our public defender agency an independent exec- dollar as far as possible. Gov. Patrick’s proposal to reform utive branch agency overseen by a chief legal counsel to the way in which we provide public defender services is be appointed by the governor for a term co-terminus with motivated by this imperative. We simply cannot ask tax- the governor’s, the governance structure will be consistent payers to pay $60 million more than is necessary to meet with how more states provide public defender services, government’s obligation to provide quality legal services eliminate the potential for conflicts of interest, and to indigent criminal defendants. improve public accountability. Third, the governor’s proposal will institute a more Jay Gonzalez is the state’s secretary of administration and finance.

Plan violates separation of powers provisions by arnold r. rosenfeld

the committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS) claims, and is in violation of the “separation of powers” board and management staff have no quarrel, and in fact clause of the Massachusetts Constitution. are in agreement, with the overall point made by Secretary We also are seriously concerned that the adoption of Gonzalez. We feel that legal services to the indigent, this proposal will compromise a legal services program that required by law to be provided by CPCS, should be sup- is the paradigm for other states. Nevertheless, we agree plied in the most efficient and economical way as long as that we must find new ways to make available the services the quality of representation is not compromised. Where that we are mandated to provide by the federal and state we differ is how to accomplish this goal. constitutions and by statute, while reducing, or at least We believe that the proposals for change described by slowing the growth, of the CPCS budget. We enthusiasti- Secretary Gonzalez and in the governor’s budget are ill- cally accept the responsibility for working with the gover- advised and rely on some erroneous assumptions. In par- nor and the Legislature to achieve that goal. ticular, we think the plan to hire 1,000 new full-time public There are a number of problems with Secretary Gon - defenders and 500 support staff and to place what is now zalez’s proposals. First, his claim that the new proposal CPCS into a new, independent executive branch agency is will save $60 million in the budget relies on the incorrect misguided, will not save the $60 million Secretary Gonzalez notion that every single case in which CPCS provides rep-

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argument & counterpoint

resentation is a district court case. Murder cases, superior health would be pitted against lawyers from another exec- court felony assignments, civil matters, such as cases related utive branch state agency such as the Department of Child- to children and families, civil commitments, and mental ren and Families or the Department of Mental Health. health cases all are more complex than district court cases In addition, public safety is quintessentially an execu- and inevitably will take more time and be more expensive tive function while the public defense is quintessentially a than district court cases. judicial function. It is not hard to imagine who would be Furthermore, the governor’s budget proposal fails to given priority in budget and staffing between the State provide funding for cases where private bar appoint- Police, who investigate and arrest alleged criminals, and ments must be made when there are conflicts of interest, CPCS, which has the highly unpopular duty of defending as is required by the Massachusetts Rules of Professional persons charged with even the most heinous crimes, a duty Conduct (ethical rules for lawyers in Massachusetts), either in which representation of a criminal defendant is con- because there is more than one defendant in the matter, ducted with total concern for the zealous protection of or one of the full-time public defenders concurrently is the individual’s constitutional rights without consideration representing or previously has represented a person directly for the possible impact on the public safety. The long-run adverse to the present client. Based on our data, these possibility of serious interference by the executive branch conflicts arise in about 25 percent of criminal cases and in in the conduct of the public defense over which it has over- as many as 75 percent of children and family law cases. sight is exactly why the “separation of powers” was adopted. Secretary Gonzalez undervalues the cost benefits that The tangential point Secretary Gonzalez brings up come with private bar representation, which include the fact that in the privately assigned cases, the Common wealth does The change would raise not have to pay for health insurance, retire- serious ethical problems. ment, office support staff, office space, and equipment, all of which will be required for the 1,000 new regarding the potential for a conflict of interest involving state lawyers and for the 500 additional support staff that the four members of the CPCS board who last year received will be needed. In addition, he fails to grasp that the cost assignments and were paid for their work on those cases of training the 1,000 new lawyers is much more substan- is a red herring. The CPCS board is appointed by the SJC. tial than the training required of private attorneys, who The SJC’s appointments to the CPCS board include indi- are not paid by the state for training. viduals with a variety of backgrounds, including law pro- Another significant, and perhaps insoluble, problem fessors, large and small firm lawyers with both prosecution with the governor’s proposal is that shifting CPCS ser- and defense experience, former public defenders, a federal vices from the control of the judiciary, and specifically the defender, former legislators, as well as some lawyers who Supreme Judicial Court, where it has been since its incep- take assignments of cases. These latter members of the board tion in 1960, to the executive branch, runs afoul of the add the perspective of lawyers currently experiencing the “separation of powers” provision of the Massa chu setts same difficulties as the other lawyers who take assign- Constitution. Article 30 of the Massachusetts Declar a tion ments. They often point out problems and propose ways of Rights prohibits the other branches (executive and leg- for management to deal with those problems. The board islative) from exercising judicial powers. The SJC, in plays no role in these or any appointments, the setting of Abodeely v. County of Worcester, has held specifically that rates, or the amount paid to any lawyer. There is no poten- the provision of defense lawyers to the indigent is one of tial for conflict of interest under either the state ethics the SJC’s inherent powers. Furthermore, the SJC has exer- laws or the Massachusetts Rules of Professional Conduct. cised its inherent authority to oversee the system for The argument that other states have adopted the gov- assigning counsel for indigent murder defendants since ernance structure proposed in the governor’s budget is not 1807, and its right to do so has been formally recognized pertinent. Of the 13 states whose public defender agency by the Legislature since 1820. operates out of the executive branch, three have no written Transfer of oversight of the public defense to the exec- separation of powers provision in their state constitution, utive branch, as proposed in the governor’s budget, would nine have separation of powers provisions that have been also raise serious ethical problems for CPCS lawyers. The substantially weakened by a qualifying clause, and one separation of powers provision of the state constitution has no explicit requirement for separation between the operates to prevent an unconstitutional conflict of interest branches of government as we do. Under the circum- between the executive and the judicial branches. If CPCS stances, there is no good reason why a transition from the were transferred to the executive branch, CPCS lawyers judiciary to the executive would be appropriate. handling cases related to children and families or mental We support Secretary Gonzalez’s proposal to imple-

88 CommonWealth SPRING 2011 argument & counterpoint

ment changes in the verification system for determining get. Based on comparisons with spending in the previous indigency. Indeed, these changes were authorized in 2005 three fiscal years, they resulted in an estimated savings of by the Legislature. We agree that by using Department of more than $1.7 million over the first six months of imple- Revenue tax data and Department of Transitional Assist - mentation through a reduction in counsel assignments. ance methods, significant savings can be achieved. Despite We estimate that from fiscal year 2007 through Septem - legislative authorization, the enhanced verification proto- ber 30, 2010, there could have been savings of approxi- col has never been implemented. By adopting Depart ment mately $6.6 million. We are confident that, if the addi- of Transitional Assistance verification methods and fully tional offenses identified by the Rogers Commission were implementing the 2005 legislation, we believe significant converted, it would further decrease the number of assign- savings can be achieved, and there is no reason why these ments requiring counsel appointment. methods should not be put into practice immediately. We CPCS recognizes that every effort must be made to avoid also submit that it would be a mistake to transfer the respon- unnecessary expenditures in this time of fiscal crisis. The sibility for this task from the Probation Depart ment to committee is working with its staff to consider initiatives CPCS. Probation is perfectly placed in the courts to collect that would reduce costs, and we intend to evaluate any and and verify this information with its existing staff while all suggestions. We believe that with our experienced board CPCS has no experience or capability to carry out this duty. and management team, we can achieve savings without We also support complete implementation of the rec- reducing the quality of representation for all indigents ommendations made by the 2005 Commission to Study entitled to counsel. We look forward to working with the the Provision of Counsel to Indigent Persons in Massa - governor’s staff and the Legislature to implement appro- chu setts (the Rogers Commission) regarding converting priate modifications to the present system. some minor crimes to civil infractions or crimes which do not have incarceration as an option. Both of these options Arnold R. Rosenfeld, an attorney at K&L Gates, is a Committee eliminate the constitutional right to counsel. Some of for Public Counsel Services board member. He was a public these changes were made in the fiscal year 2010 state bud- defender for 16 years, and the first chief counsel of CPCS.

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book review

Urban (love) affairs Ed Glaeser explains why cities are the hub of economic innovation— and our best hope for saving the planet

Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier By Edward Glaeser New York, The Penguin Press, 352 pages

reviewed by john schneider

cities have always been my hometown. I’ve ways. Given the projected growth of cities world- lived in five of them during my lifetime. The only wide, it has become increasingly important to house I have ever owned is in a city. My neigh- understand why some cities thrive and others borhood is diverse and compact, and I like it that don’t. Glaeser, a Harvard way. No leafy suburbs for me. I’ve always assumed economics professor, I just gravitate toward more bustling settings. But points the way toward a along comes Edward Glaeser to pronounce cities global urban future that nothing less than mankind’s “greatest invention.” could renew our econ- That’s a weighty load to carry, but he makes a good omy, lift the poor out of case for it. In the process, Glaeser makes his new poverty, and just possi- book, Triumph of the City, important reading for bly save our planet. It’s a anyone who thinks about cities and wants to tall order. What’s more, understand the potential of this great invention doing so will require a —as well as the consequences when it fails to adapt good deal of counterin- quickly enough to a rapidly changing world. tuitive thinking and the Why are cities such a great invention? They are adoption of public poli- the cradle of innovation, providing a rich envi- cies that will be tough to sell to a politically dom- ronment within which we learn from each other inant middle class now sprawled out across sub- and build upon our strengths, Glaeser says. Ideas urbia and beyond. emerge more readily in the ferment of city life Glaeser argues that prosperous cities are “gate- and spread more rapidly around the world. “Cities ways between markets and cultures.” Our task is to are the absence of physical space between people figure out how to make those “gateways” function and companies,” Glaeser writes. “They are prox- better. It begins with people. As we all know so imity, density, closeness. They enable us to work well, these days skilled, educated people (“human and play together, and their success depends on capital” in today’s lexicon) often determine a city’s the demand for physical connection.” fate. “To thrive,” Glaeser writes, “cities must attract According to the United Nations, the greatest smart people and enable them to work collabora- urban growth the world has ever known is now tively. There is no such thing as a successful city occurring. By 2030 more than half the world’s without human capital.” No argument from me population, 5 billion people, will be living in met- here. Why has Boston prospered while Detroit and ropolitan regions. Cities work because they are our own similar, but smaller, industrial “Gateway crowded. They move ideas from person to per- cities” like Springfield, New Bedford, and Fall River son, from invention to production to the market- have fallen further behind? They have lost the skills place. race to Boston, and for that matter, to Bangalore, This is a book that does not lack vision, ambi- Milan, and Singapore. Fair or not, not every city tion, passion, and boldness for describing how will attract enough educated people to help it cities enhance human living in all sorts of grow in the 21st century.

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book review

The factors determining a city’s fortunes have changed is working well, is constantly transforming many poor dramatically over the last 30 years. Cities once got rich people into middle class people... Cities don’t lure the because of their access to dense transportation networks middle class, they create it.” and a reliable pool of labor. Glaeser explains that New That’s still happening in cities with growing, dynamic York City’s better port gave it a strategic advantage over economies. In others, however, that transformative effect Boston. The building of the Erie Canal opened up New Jacobs celebrated has vanished. “If an area has become York to markets in the American heartland and spurred the home of default for the poor people who are staying the growth of Rochester, Buffalo, and Chicago. These poor, then that area is failing,” Glaeser writes. It’s the lack cities once prospered because they “grew on spots where of social mobility—not poverty—that’s the real problem goods had to be shifted from one form of transportation to cities must solve. another,” he writes. But by the 1970s that competitive Overall, cities are more prosperous and productive advantage had disappeared, replaced by the need to attract than rural areas. According to Glaeser, when a nation’s urban and retain knowledge workers. Cities that failed to see population rises 10 percent, per capita output increases this coming faced a long decline. by 30 percent. One confusing detail is whether Glaeser Many of these cities have become home to growing sometimes means “metropolitan area” when describing numbers of poor. But slums—the right kind of slums, at cities. Metropolitan Boston consists of more than 100 least—can be good, according to Glaeser. While he says cities and towns, and it is this agglomeration, not just the the middle class has long gone to the suburbs—pursuing area within Boston’s boundaries, that defines Boston’s a suburban lifestyle (like Glaeser’s own) of more living successful knowledge economy. space, “spongy lawns for toddlers,” and better schools— What does become clear is that sprawl is the real enemy cities that have cheap housing, adequate public trans- in Glaeser’s view. His book is really about the social ben- portation, and work provide opportunities for the poor efits of density. Regulations, Glaeser says, need to be to move up the economic ladder. As the noted urban streamlined to encourage the construction of skyscrapers thinker Jane Jacobs wrote: “A metropolitan economy, if it and discourage sprawl, ushering in “a new emerald-green THINKKNIHT K BIG NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITYVINUNRETSAEHTRON DOES..SEODYTISREV We partner with corporations, hospitals, foundations, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations across Massachusetts—and around the globe—to solve the toughest challenges of the 21st centur .y

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book review

age of cities.” with policies that promote more competition and school Glaeser is also in the vanguard of new thinkers making choice—like a large-scale regional voucher program. the convincing case that cities are good for the environ- Other wise, urban public schools are doomed to educat- ment. “Simply put,” he says, “if we wanted to reduce emis- ing only the poor. Capping the federal home mortgage sions by changing our land-development policies, more interest deduction will encourage more “thrifty living in Americans should live in denser, more urban environ- modest residences” by the middle class, writes Glaeser. We ments.” Families need a car (or two or three) to get around should challenge zoning decisions that restrict growth, too much of America, and, increasingly, India and China make housing more expensive, and contribute to sprawl. And while we’re at it, he says, we might want to adopt higher gasoline taxes like Europe’s or Sprawl is the real enemy “congestion pricing” to reduce our reliance on in Glaeser’s view. cars and control rising CO2 emissions. As an economist, Glaeser looks for the as well. New York and other cities, in contrast, are actually right incentives to nudge us toward better behavior. our greenest places, with their dramatically lower auto- Congestion pricing was conceived in the late 1950s by a mobile use and compact, stacked dwellings with heating Nobel Prize winning economist, William Vickery, as an and cooling carbon footprints that are a fraction of those efficient way to charge commuters for the congestion they of an average house in the suburbs. “Anyone who believes create. It has been adopted in Singapore and London. But that global warming is a real danger should see dense urban since New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg flirted with living as a big part of the solution,” Glaeser concludes. the idea several years ago, I am aware of no US mayor even But city-friendly policies creating incentives that result commissioning a study of whether or not it would work in more sustainable growth will require a completely new here. Imagine what charging commuters for their rush way of politics. For example, to attract and retain the urban hour travel would do to help us pay for the Big Dig, buy middle class, Glaeser says we need to improve city schools the T reliable new trains, and build Boston a 21st-century

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book review

transportation infrastructure. Now imagine getting such global hub for the knowledge economy. legislation passed. But that does not mean we should ignore the state’s That’s a shortcoming of this book. There’s a wide gulf smaller cities and watch them just fade away. Worcester, between Glaeser’s rational policy ideas and a winning polit- the second largest city in New England, is proof that tar- ical strategy to see them adopted. The urban/suburban geted state investment, in this case a public medical school, coalition needed for policies more favorable to cities doesn’t can spark economic growth. Lowell and New Bedford are exist yet. Still, new ideas need to be planted, nurtured, and leveraging universities, national parks, and old mill build- discussed, and that the book does well. ings to attract artists, entrepreneurs, and empty-nesters. Mobilizing a political coalition strong enough to turn Pittsfield, once a General Electric company town, has Glaeser’s many bold ideas into law will require the kind of learned that it cannot rely on just one industry and is leadership that has been absent for some time. Chicagoan diversifying its economy to generate growth. Barack Obama, our first city-based president in decades, Although it has not been easy, these cities have stuck said all the right things when he established the White to a strategy that is starting to turn things around. But House Office of Urban Policy to coordinate federal efforts creating educational and economic opportunity and to revitalize cities. But not much has happened and, as is accelerating growth in these places as well as Boston—in often the case, it really is up to mayors and local leaders other words, reinventing the invention we call cities— to make cities work better. There is no tougher job in gov- will ultimately require not only Ed Glaeser’s bold policy ernment than mayor, especially in a city on the outs. If ideas, but a new political coalition for the 21st century you have any doubt, watch one episode of Brick City, the that’s ambitious and confident enough to embrace cities reality TV show starring Newark Mayor Cory Booker. as the best hope for our future. What does Glaeser’s way of understanding the economics of cities mean for us here? Glaeser says that “Massachusetts John Schneider is executive vice president of MassINC and rises or falls with Boston.” Lately, that has made us a state directs the organization’s Gateway Cities initiative targeting the on the rise. Over the last 30 years, Boston has become a state’s smaller cities.

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real talk by michael jonas

Labor’s love lost How public sector unions became the bête noire of uneasy times

when it comes to rising anger toward public sector school children see unions not as fighting for them but as unions, Wisconsin’s hard-charging Republican governor, only defending their own members,” says Bluestone. That Scott Walker, has taken the battle to a new—and caustic view is reflected in policy shifts by even union-friendly lib- —level. But think of Barry Bluestone as the canary in the erals like Gov. Deval Patrick, who has significantly altered coal mine. Nearly two years ago, Bluestone penned an op- his stand on issues such as charter schools and the need ed in the Boston Globe warning of a growing backlash to force savings in municipal health care costs. against public sector unions that resist everything from Labor leaders say the assault on public sector unions is changes in generous health care and retirement benefits to simply driving a race to the bottom—a deterioration of reform of outmoded teachers contracts. That backlash public workers’ benefits that will only put them on the (along with the backlash to the backlash) is now in full fury, same shaky ground as those in the private sector. While as cash-strapped states and local government struggle to some, like Wisconsin’s anti-union governor, are seizing maintain services, while education reform advocates target on the budget stress to try to drive a stake through the hidebound union contracts that they say hold back schools. heart of labor, Bluestone fervently hopes unions can save It’s not just that Bluestone, dean of the school of social themselves. Nearly 20 years ago, he coauthored a book science at Northeastern University, was ahead of the curve with his father, Negotiating the Future: A Labor Per spective in warning public sector unions to change their ways or see on Ameri can Business, that may help point the way. They their fortunes and public support slip further. It’s that he argued that traditional, adversarial negotiations over was such an unlikely guy to deliver this message. The lib- labor contracts, which imply conflicting interests, should eral-leaning economist is not only a believer in the union give way to “enterprise compacts,” agreements that build cause, his late father, Irving Bluestone, spent 40 years as a off of shared interests. top United Auto Workers union official. There are some glimmers of hope. Bluestone hails the The industrial union movement “is what converted an recent election of Paul Toner as the new president of the insecure working class into a more secure middle class,” Massachusetts Teachers Association. In contrast with other says Bluestone. But public sector unions seem to be turn- union chiefs, Toner has signaled the MTA’s willingness to ing that idea on its head. With taxpayers fretting over cuts help craft new teacher evaluation tools that include mea- to services and schools, the squeeze that public sector sures of student achievement, a reform embraced by every- unions are putting on public coffers can make them look one from President Obama and his education secretary, more like a threat to the middle class than a guardian of Arne Duncan, to state education leaders. its security and quality of life. MIT management professor Thomas Kochan helped In the labor movement’s heyday in the 1950s, when one- mediate negotiations between state officials and unions third of all US workers were union members, the union under the new merged state Department of Transport ation. surge caused a rising tide that lifted all boats, as non-union Agreements were reached that “got rid of a lot of compli- employers felt pressure to increase wages and im prove cated and costly work rules,” he says, with a share of the benefits. But today just 11.9 percent of the US workforce savings directed to workers. “This is the moment for really belongs to a union. transformative change,” says Kochan. What’s more, with almost all the falloff in union mem- Blue stone says public sector unions must recognize the bership occurring in the private sector, public sector work- need to embrace reforms, not fight them, and help fashion ers now make up a majority of all union members. That solutions to the problems facing public budgets. “Pro - is a dramatic change, and it has turned union battles into gressive unions are crucial to society and I rue the day a zero-sum scramble over scarce public dollars, where union when unions are so weak that they will not be able to play gains are often seen as a community’s loss. that traditional role,” he says. “The problem today with public-sector unions is too But the time for unions to step up is now. “It’s the many taxpayers, too many cities, too many parents of eleventh hour,” he says.

96 CommonWealth SPRING 2011

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